SI Archives Part 1: A New Tomorrow
by Guardian54
Summary: Time wasn't so easy to change, and so all the wars of the C&C series plus WWII would come to pass. This is the tale of Shepard Industries, the world's first PMC, from its beginning to the end of WWII. Presented in format mostly akin to a history book.
1. Harbinger of a New Age

A/N: I don't know enough about Pokémon to build momentum there, however I do know enough about WWII and I'm changing history enough to build "momentum" HERE, ergo… here we go.

There may be M rated references occasionally (war often involves rape of women) but the main themes are T rated and teenagers these days have seen it all anyhow, no need for M rating.

Don't try to tell me I have too many things in-progress at once, I know that! However, I need to wait for HOTS and ME3, and ideally LOTV for the story to be completely ready to work out. In the meantime, let us look into a past and a near future that could have been instead of a distant future… This also explains why in most later incarnations where she exists Hannah is either born at a less pivotal time or has a time loop holding down the possibilities of what she can do. The universe decided that it overpowered her by accident and tried not to make the mistake again.

We shall now embark on a story from before World War II to World War IV (RA2) to the Fourth Tiberium War and perhaps beyond. Prepare yourselves… for A New Tomorrow.

* * *

><p>Chapter 1: Harbinger of a New Age<p>

_Southern Ontario, December 31, 1899…_

"I can see the head, love, it'll be over soon, just push…" Neil Shepard, despite the midwife questioning it (he'd replied that to get his wife pregnant he'd seen enough of her anyways), was present at the delivery of his first child. He looked to be in his early twenties… but his friends were all mainly in their later forties. The reason was that Neil Shepard's family had a history of longevity and near-difficulty aging, as well as rather lowered fertility than normal.

His wife, Jade Shepard, fortunately or some would say unfortunately suffered the same problems, also passed down through her family. That being said, she was still quite attractive despite being slightly older than Neil, and looked to be around the same age as her husband. They had been trying for twenty years to conceive… and this was their first child. Neil was feeling his wife crush his hands while watching their baby's head anxiously as it emerged from his wife's body. As soon as its mouth was clear of its mother it began to gasp for air, producing a characteristic baby cry. The rest, after the head, came out fairly easily, and then Neil was watching the midwife, who was also his sister-in-law, set his tiny daughter down as she tied and cut the umbilical cord. Then she dressed the wound and wrapped the baby in a little dark red blanket, the closest Jade could agree with to the traditional pink. Then she handed the infant to Jade, who was clearly exhausted, pushing out the afterbirth as an afterthought as she looked down on the new life she and Neil had created. The little girl blinked and watched her mother, suddenly alert, before settling her head closer against her mother's body, still looking around warily.

"What do you want to name our beautiful little daughter?" Neil asked as the baby stared at him.

"Hannah, I want to name her Hannah Shepard." Jade stated simply.

Neil smiled "Then Hannah it is." His smile shifted into a smirk as his baby girl grabbed a finger on his hand "I can't say I'm sorry you had to go through that though… did Hannah just roll her eyes at me?"

Jade chuckled tiredly "I wouldn't be surprised, Neil, it was a rather lame use of words."

* * *

><p>Hannah Shepard was NOT an average child, as her parents soon discovered. And, thanks to their longevity, her grandparents and great-grandparents also discovered it. She didn't seem to know how to cry, though groaning and growling were not infrequent whenever she wanted something. Even when she was less than three months old, she would spend her days looking at her surroundings and quietly listening to the grown-ups. When offered either water or Jade's breast hourly, she would refuse when she didn't want it and accept when she did. She rarely fussed and rarely needed burping, and did not tend to spit up anything while burping. The oddest thing though, was that she would always watch adults taste something before deciding it could be put in her mouth.<p>

Stranger things happened after that observation was made. Hannah learnt to read before she learnt to talk clearly, and she was soon engrossed in learning every bit of knowledge she could. Neil and Jane—and both sets of Hannah's grandparents and all four sets of great-grandparents—realized quite early that they had a prodigy on their hands and supplied her with all the books she could want. Perhaps they should have taken note of the warning sign that was their daughter constructing an electromagnetic nail gun (though it was too long to be practical for nails) in the back yard, but they decided it was just her creativity and innovative nature and let it run. The cumbersome nail gun stayed there until Hannah managed to reroute enough wires from the orchard house and perimeter to fire it at full power. The nail used sheared a lamp post in half at point-blank range. That was when Neil and Jade finally convinced her to take the coil-gun as Hannah called it down. Of course, they had to replace quite a few burnt-out fuses too, but that's beside the point.

At the time, Hannah was only ten years old, knew how to do chores (though she never did any) and was the nerd of her school. She had constructed a small laboratory a safe distance from the house and was conducting experiments with various chemicals she purchased on a fairly regular and planned basis. Her younger sister, Jane, was only four years old and seemed to be almost retracing to an extent her sister's footsteps with her love for books and knowledge, but she seemed a bit more cautious than Hannah, reluctant to conduct dangerous experiments. Jade and Neil jokingly blamed each other (pillow talk) that their daughters had inherited their inventiveness, as Neil ran a factory making harvesting machines for various crops in Toronto, and Jade was the co-owner of the joint venture. It was part of why Neil's family's inherited orchard and vineyard business (mainly run by Neil's younger brother) was so successful, since they tested cutting-edge technologies right at home first.

Thanks to her nerd designation, Hannah was sometimes bullied at school, though the bullies stopped after the first few tries resulted in them being hospitalized. An interesting thing was that she seemed to instinctively know what to do. According to Jade, "She inherited her father's instinct for danger…" That included, apparently, making sure no one believed the bullies accusing her of trying to kill them with a cricket bat after they cornered her. She'd managed to persuade the teachers that there was no way a sweet little girl like herself could swing a cricket bat hard enough to break a boy's nose and that the boys had been trying to attack her but missed when they swung at her. Needless to say, said boys were given stern reprimands and never tried threatening anyone with a weapon they didn't know how to use ever again.

* * *

><p><em>4 August, 1914<em>

Neil and Jade were just wrapping up a loving morning quickie when they heard the crash of the door in the next room bouncing off the wall as it was thrown open. "My God, where is it? Where IS IT?" They heard Hannah seemingly in a panic searching about her room for something.

Neil chuckled into the side of one of his wife's firm, sag-free breasts as they cuddled in the afterglow "Looks like Hannah's missing some of her ingredients again." The family was atheist, so Hannah rarely bothered referring to God other than as a figure of speech.

"Neil, maybe we should get up and get to work, it is after all half an hour's commute even with our custom-built car…" Jade stated uneasily, sensing something wasn't quite right.

Neil sighed before raising his head off her chest and pulling what weight he had been putting on her completely off, reaching over to grab a shirt as he sat up "If you say so, love." After both of them were dressed, with a couple more kisses holding promises for later, he opened the door in time to be presented with a briefcase and his daughter's grim expression. "What's wrong pumpkin?"

"Dad, you know I hate it when you call me that, read this." She shoved a newspaper with "WAR!" on the front page under her father's nose. "Now since they're asking for officers, a man from the recruitment office dropped by this morning with a letter for you, dad, apparently they want well-to-do gentlemen for officers… Stupid, I know, but that's life." She held out the letter in question as her parents finished reading the paper and started on the letter. "You are to report to the train station by August 10, that's Monday. I know you're fit and all… but there are a few things you should know. The Ross Rifles the soldiers are given these days… remember how we bought one? I tested it several times this last year, and the 1910 model sucks, it jams whenever the rounds get any dirt or mud in them. So I designed and built something just for you… I might want to open a firearms factory later but this is for your eyes only." She opened the briefcase and her parent's jaws dropped along with the lid when she flipped it open. "Behold, the A-WSM-10-40A Submachine Gun."

"Hannah, where did you get all these parts?" Neil finally thought to ask, looking at the brown-painted metal and wood parts

"Please don't tell me you didn't notice the wood shop equipment going missing…" Hannah groaned "I bought lots of plaster, carved the designs I wanted in metal with wood, and then cast them as stainless steel, and voila we get this, I call it a Sub-machine gun, I tested it myself…"

Jade was very upset at her baby girl "So you mean those noises out in the backyard…" They had an estate in the countryside. "…were you testing a gun you made yourself?"

"Yeah, I tested it every way I could think of, had to custom-order cartridges from an ammunition shop." Hannah still had a broad grin "The thing cycles fast enough to spit eight rounds a second from a twenty-round clip, mechanism's simple but durable. I ran over it with the family car three times and nothing broke other than the sights being deformed, I left it in a bucket of water overnight and still worked the next day, did the same with mud. Last winter I left it in the snow for a night and it still worked fine, it's been tested for everything I could think of, hell, I even left it, with the safety on of course, in uncle's sewage tank for a month between our visits, though I told him not to do anything about it, and it still worked… though I had to wash my hands a lot afterward. Believe me, if you can't get this gun to save you in the face of an enemy charge, nothing can save you."

"Since when did you learn to drive?" Jane shouted indignantly. Hannah pointed at her dad simply and Jane glared at her beloved husband for teaching their 14-year-old daughter how to drive.

Her father finally found his voice "I don't know what to say Hannah, how did you anticipate this… war… last year?"

"Anyone who looks closely enough knows it, reading all those ship magazines and other periodicals, Britain and Germany have both been racing in battleships, so there was an arms race in Europe. Something was going to set it off, so I thought I'd get to work and give dad the best chance he could if he got recruited."

Neil bent down slightly as he hugged his black-haired brown-eyed daughter. He had heard that teenagers were rebellious, but he was not expecting something like this… it was practically the opposite of rebellious. "There are no words for this…" he whispered.

"Thanks for the mushy moment, dad, now can I get back to informing you about the specs and workings of this weapon?" Hannah put in "I had to order the barrel from a gun shop but the recoil dampener on the end is entirely my own design, this gun can be assembled and disassembled within one minute each." Before her parents' eyes she put the gun together and loaded it within a single minute "Safety mechanism is a block mechanism and physical insertion, so it just won't fire without the safety off." She pointed at the lever, then at a more obvious one "this toggles semiautomatic fire and full automatic fire, semi-auto offers accurate kill shots up to three hundred meters" the family worked in metric since it was more convenient than imperial "though if the barrel's clogged expect half of that. Full auto is a bit of a spray-and-pray affair but if you use controlled bursts, a mechanism which I have yet to invent, by throttling your trigger finger you'll get accurate kills up to two hundred meters. Again, if the barrel's full of mud, sewage, grit, and so on expect half of that. Remember to shake out the gun if it's been immersed in something, be it water, sewage or sand, otherwise it may, though it's highly unlikely, jam if the barrel is full of sand. Go report in at the recruitment office to confirm it, then come back, you have a lot of practice to do with this gun."

Neil, still gaping slightly in abject shock, did as his daughter ordered, getting the car, which he'd built himself with some help from Hannah, ready to leave while Jade and Hannah talked. "Hannah, I'm not sure dealing in firearms is entirely appropriate for children… but I'm happy that you did what you could to help your father. I'm really glad we encouraged your scientific ventures… now how's your correspondence with those professors at Oxford?"

Hannah hugged her mother tightly, having left lecture mode when her Dad went to the garage "It's fine Mom, don't worry about it." She mumbled quietly "Me and Jane will stay well clear of your room and ensuite for the week, unless Dad doesn't show up to my lessons. Jane can teach him the theory if need be and while she's doing that you and I can go supervise the plant, I know it's the high season for farm equipment production and sales, but we all know that this war will probably mean the plant gets less attention anyhow, because so many people will be off at war. Enjoy him while he's still home, it'll be several years before you have the chance again."

Jade blinked her blue eyes, her brown hair swishing slightly as she tilted her head "What?"

Hannah pulled away, smirking "You don't think I know what happens behind closed doors? Spend the week with Dad, but make sure he doesn't come home to find a child who didn't see its father for the first three or so years of its life." She winked before running off, dodging her mother's playful swat.

"HANNAH SHEPARD, YOU COME BACK HERE!" Jade eventually gave up the chase, when her daughter locked herself inside her laboratory/engineering shop. "You know me too well…" a broad grin spread over the brunette's attractive face (Jane turning out a redhead was a bit of surprise until she and Neil, who had the black hair Hannah inherited, remembered that each had a redheaded grandparent) "Why the hell not… I don't think we've done enough in Neil's office at work, in public, before, have we?" She moved off to the garage "Neil, go take a shower before we leave, pay special attention down there, I want to try something."

Neil Shepard raised an eyebrow but grinned and nodded approval "Understood, honey." He thought to what she could want to do. It wasn't like they hadn't done it up against his solid oak office door or on the desk before, and then they had to open the windows to let the heady smell of sex out, but maybe she wanted to try something new this time… Why the hell not.

* * *

><p>Needless to say, Neil was in heaven for the next week, his virility, inherited from his ancestors, helped a lot, though his talent with his mouth was also relevant… especially under the office desk at his manufacturing plant. Hannah and Jane gave their parents privacy… except for times when Neil had to be dragged out for Hannah's lessons and Jane lecturing him based off of scripts Hannah had prepared. Though the workers at the plant, all old hands, especially now that the economy was beginning to gear toward war production, were used to having Jade for their boss, it was still a source of amusement to hear, and watch (in the plant's yard during lunch break) the bosses' younger daughter lecture her father on the art of digging slit trenches for cover against anything except a direct artillery hit. Then there was the talk of infantry and machine-guns and about the stupidity of charging into machine-gun fire. Many of the workers listened rather closely to that one, and were startled by how much sense it made.<p>

But that was all irrelevant to our story as Neil boarded the train with his luggage, which consisted of the briefcase and a suitcase with some practical clothes. The case had the disassembled parts of what his daughter called the "A-WSM-10-40A" (for Army, Weapon: Submachine gun, 10mm calibre, 40 calibres barrel, first model) inside along with 10 clips. The suitcase contained winter clothing in the form of a warm scarf, a thick winter jacket, pants and boots. All had been chemically treated by Hannah to resist bugs and moulds, and Hannah had created a mask for her father, with aviator goggles, and a disc of activated charcoal sealed in the sealed mouthpiece that was usually not used "Dad, if people around you start toppling for no reason, clip the mouthpiece on after peeling off the covers, I kept rats in the lab to check for poisonous gases… and a lot of them died in the experiments. I found that activated charcoal protected from a lot of gases… use it." She had told him. Other clothes she packed included several summer shirts in inconspicuous brown colours.

When Neil talked to his bunk-mates at Officer School about his daughter, a month after getting to know them, they had stated that he was either lying or he was one lucky bastard to get a prodigy of a daughter like that. Then they'd asked if they could get the guns too, since they practically had to avoid breathing on their Ross Rifles to not jam the damned things. He replied that it was a custom design and had been refused by the Ministry of Militia and Defence. The consensus was rapidly achieved: "Sam Hughes is an idiot."

Surprisingly for everyone except people who knew Neil (including his new buddies at Officer School) or his family, the war was not over by Christmas as Hannah was proven correct again and again with the failure of the Ardennes Offensive by the French and the Germans at the Battle of the Marne. Infantry could not stand up to machine-gun fire effectively on open terrain with charging tactics like those Neil were being taught. The man ignored the lessons and took his daughter's doctrine to heart, which meant that, as he had sufficiently impressed the board in charge of the camp with his low casualty projections, he was commissioned as a Lieutenant. He wrote in his third letter home that "If I did not know how much of an utter genius you were, Hannah, I would not believe how your lessons are being vindicated again and again in the simulation battles we fight here. My men are able to dig better fortifications, survive longer, and move forward faster than anyone else's once I suggested we simulate machine-gun fire. Fortunately the administrators here at the school think Hughes is an idiot, so they'd like to order some of your guns to outfit the officers. They also believed me when I suggested that machine-gun fire simulations as on the Western Front would change the entire art of infantry warfare." Needless to say, his daughter's ingenuity and the hard work displayed by Neil Shepard soon earned him a promotion to Captain and assignment to a unit shortly before they were about to be shipped off. He was assigned to the 54th Royal Canadian Infantry Regiment.

Neil arrived in northern France in February 1915 with the rest of the first batch of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. About half the senior officers in the regiment had been, much to Hughes' chagrin, given the A-WSM-10-40A as a "secondary weapon", though they all knew their Ross Rifles were good for one long-range shot before it would jam so badly it wasn't worth fixing with the time it would take. The WSM proved spectacularly successful, though Hughes still insisted on being an ass about it.

* * *

><p><em>Moments before the Second Battle of Ypres<em>

"Neil, I feel sorry for your wife." One of said man's oldest officer friends stated. Sitting next to Neil in the dugout was a man called Henry Black, dropping by just for a visit with his friend. It turned out he lived only a short distance from the main plant Neil and Jade owned. "Last time our Regiment went for R&R the boys had time to drink, hit on women, and even get laid. You… you did none of the above. Your sex life at home must be really dull if you're always so unenthusiastic…" He shook his head, he'd been watching Neil for some time, and the man seemed to be a eunuch for all the interest he showed women, though he said he had a wife at home waiting for him, and that was why he wasn't interested in flings. Henry, at First Lieutenant one rank under Neil, was concerned for the man's well-being… well, more his wife's happiness, since Henry believed that an unsatisfied wife would not be happy nor faithful.

"Hah, if you knew some of the things Jade came up with and the things she agreed to…" Neil snorted, and then fell silent as he realized it was rude to talk about his love that way.

"Like what? Tell me or next time we'll all ply you with drink until you do." Henry teased, gesturing with his eyes at Neil's men, who nodded at their CO, trying to prompt him into going ahead.

"You know how I own a manufacturing plant and my brother owns a vineyard right?" Neil started reluctantly, since he had a feeling that even if the men forced drink on him no one else would do a thing, simply because being drunk on R&R circuits was normal, unless he showed alcohol poisoning symptoms. "Well other than jumping me in the vineyard fields, she also put my office desk to good use…"

"Go on." His troops, now wide-eyed and attentive instead of slightly downcast from being in the trenches for so long, watched him closely. Neil was instantly reminded of one particular line of Hannah's doctrine: When dealing with subordinate men, tell stories if needed, don't be afraid to embellish, but only enough to establish yourself as the alpha male. If these stories are about sexual escapades, then so be it.

"Well there were a few conferences with the heads of the various departments that she knelt in on, and yes, she was under the desk with her mouth on me. Of course, I returned the favour one a different day while she was doing paperwork at the same desk. We went at it against the door a few times too, and sometimes on the desk. Believe me, I used to get laid something like three times a day, and only the morning quickie is typically in a bed." Neil ended it there, he didn't need to embarrass Jade any more than he already had… he was going to need to talk to Hannah about this part of her Small-Unit Command Doctrine when he got back home, or maybe in the next letter.

Cries of pain and alarm came drifting up the line from the fire trenches, and Neil looked over to see men choking and gasping in a greenish-yellow haze of sorts "Chlorine gas! Quick men! Piss on your handkerchiefs and cover your noses and mouths! If you breath that stuff it'll kill you! Me… I'll use this gas mask my daughter made for me before I came here." He stripped off the seals, then wrapped the scarf around his head and tied it, sealing the mouthpiece of the charcoal chamber to his mouth, finally he slipped the aviator goggles on, with the bottom edges under the scarf.

"Lucky bastard to have such a child prodigy…" Henry mumbled good-naturedly as he finished pissing on his hanky and slapped it over his face before running up the line toward his own unit's dugouts. They weren't as comfortable or as practical as Neil's unit as they hadn't as much practice digging slit trenches, but they still worked.

"German Infantry Incoming! Piss on your handkerchiefs and hold them over your faces to protect yourself from gas!" Neil's men shouted as on in both directions of the second trench line. Surprisingly, people listened, perhaps it was due to Hannah's tendency to have the right solutions ready for Neil to draw on.

Neil suddenly wanted to leave the dugout he'd ducked into "Everyone out of the dugout!" He shouted before charging into the main trench, most of the men once in the dugout making it out before a gigantic blast from a direct artillery shell destroyed it utterly. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…" He muttered under his breath as the odd survival instinct his ancestors had granted him had saved his ass temporarily again. "We just have to be assigned to the same battle zone as the British… men, find higher ground! Chlorine is denser than air and will sink into the trenches! Get out and take cover!" He shouted. Somewhere closer to the gas attack some guy with a strong British accent shouted to some superior whether he should listen to the "Canadian bloke" and said superior shouted back "Why the hell not? He looks to be right anyhow."

Needless to say, in short order, the entire Regiment was up past the ramparts of the trenches firing downrange at the advancing Germans who had seemingly pushed through a large chunk of the British lines to the north. Men with wet cloths tied around their faces pried Lee-Enfield rifles from the dead hands of fallen British to keep firing and other soldiers muscled machine guns into position to fire on the enemy advance. It was soon stalemated again, the first major gas attack in the world halted from gaining momentum by the efforts of a Canadian man and more importantly his gifted child.

* * *

><p><em>Later In The War…<em>

"Neil, I still think this madness comes from you not getting laid enough." Henry muttered as the two men, survivors of an offensive that had fallen victim to three fortified concrete bunkers that served as machine-gun nests, crawled toward the imposing bunker in the darkness. The afternoon offensive had stalled, and so here they were.

"Shut up Henry, if we try to go back, we'll probably get shot by startled sentries, or get shot by the Germans, you want to go home in a reasonably small number of pieces, right?" Neil growled as they dragged themselves through the mud, careful for the occasional bayonet sticking out of the dirt from other fallen soldiers.

"Whatever, I'm just following you, Captain, if we survive this, you can get most of the credit… you and your baby girl who invented these babies." Henry grumbled as he crawled, holding onto his WSM as the men had abbreviated it. Neil's family business supplied the Regiment's special demands for the rounds nowadays, having expanded to a different location to handle the additional machinery. "Doesn't seem to be any sentries around… what should we do?"

"The next bunker's firing field covers the back door of this one…" Neil noted. "Stick to the side, out of line of sight of that light over the back door, follow me." The Captain moved forward on his belly until he was flush against the side of the bunker, then inched his way to the front before unhooking one of the grenades from his belt and yanking the dirty pin with his teeth, then chucking it in through the firing window-like opening in the bunker followed by another grenade.

A sudden explosion shook the quiet of the German lines after the exhausting fight that had dragged on for the afternoon well into the evening. The line along the Somme was suddenly alive with search lights, alarms and confused commands as Neil stuck his gun over far enough to fire off a full clip into the bunker and add another grenade for good measure, Henry helping reload the gun passed to him as Neil, with Henry's WSM, stood up far enough to accurately shoot every German inside a few more times, even though only one had still been alive when he started. Then he and Henry slipped in through the gap in the bunker's wall. Neil went head-first, with his gun, now reloaded, ready to shoot any other surviving Germans, then Henry came in and the two men surveyed the inside of the rough concrete bunker and the ammunition they had available.

With Neil's rough and highly limited command of German, which he'd picked up over time, they managed to fool the Germans outside by talking in German (Neil had to teach Henry a few lines on the spot) while German troops searched the area for allied soldiers. Eventually they gave up, deciding it was just a diversion anyways or some random happening, and went back to their own bunkers. Neil then pointed to the German helmets "Put a German helmet on for now, and stock up on stick grenades, we're going to clear those two other bunkers, starting with the one farthest from us, the one at the back of this little formation. You go get field of fire coverage on the last bunker door and make sure you're using semi-auto setting, we don't have time to reload. Throw a grenade when you hear the third blast." Neil told his partner before clapping him on the shoulder and pulling on his own spiked helmet "By the way, once you get around to the side of our bunker out of the light take off the helmet and crawl to where you need to be. I'll give you five minutes before I blow that second bunker. I'm amazed these crates of grenades didn't cook off when we blasted this place, but if that's how it goes… all the better for us. These will hopefully blow the German bunkers and our men can advance again." Neil explained his haphazard plan to his subordinate, who simply nodded. It was after all the best plan they had…

Once in position, Neil waited for quite some time. He tied four of his newly-acquired stick hand grenades together in the meantime and shoved the package in, having pulled the pin on two of them. The ensuing explosion shook the ground slightly again and then he started stuffing in three more grenades as quickly as he could pull the pin. When certain that all the Germans inside had been killed, whether by grenades or by his blind firing with his gun, he noted the end of screaming form the other bunker, then stood up and shot each German corpse in his bunker a couple more time to make sure it was dead. He entered the bunker through the back door (shooting out the lock) and rigged all the grenades together. He put them on a stack of crates so that the grenades were flush against the tops of the bunker before priming one and running like hell.

Behind him, the bunker roof shook with a huge blast and Neil held up the stack of German helmets he'd picked up while in the bunker against small bits of Shrapnel that rained down on him. The fire that it lit quickly burnt the first bunker out even while the other two were set ablaze by the two marauding Canadians. Later in the night, they came across a German artillery gun and managed to capture it, firing its shell toward the coordinates of an ammunition depot they found on a map from a dead German officer. The huge mushroom cloud was visible for miles around from the blast, and the two madmen kept firing shells toward the German lines until they were out. When their own lines finally reached them, Neil got the Victoria Cross, because Henry gave him most of the credit, and Henry got a different but still highly prestigious award for his courage in following his superior on a mad but nonetheless effective scheme.

* * *

><p><em>Jade Shepard's Home, Later…<em>

"…Well girls, your father won the Victoria Cross… and he says to thank you for your bunker-clearing tactics." Jade read from the most recent letter from her husband, looking pointedly at Hannah and Jane at the last part. "The rest is rather more private…" She gave her daughters a wink at that.

Hannah rolled her eyes "Well I just got the acceptance letter from Radcliffe, tell Dad that in your letter back to him, come on Jane, back to the sketching boards… what do you think we should call our armoured tractor concept? Mobile Armour?"

The redhead (with the same hair colour as her maternal grandmother as opposed to her mother's brown and father's black hair) followed her older sister with a shrug "I was thinking something more secretive for initial deployment, hay bales? No, modern armies don't use horses as much so it might attract attention… a movement of draught animals tends to mean artillery on the move."

"Maybe Tanks would be a good name? I mean they're all over the place, men have to drink water all the time after all…"

Jane thought about it for a moment "Maybe…"

Jade watched her girls go off to Hannah's little lab with a roll of her eyes and a smile at their ingenuity as she settled back in her chair to read the rest of what her husband wrote her. Her forehead creased a moment later as she read of everyone else's opinion of Neil. "Oh you poor thing… I'm going to have to help sap you of that extra stress when you come home…" she remarked with a smirk. "And I'm going to enjoy it too."

Neil had wrote "Henry, my partner in this whole affair, whose brother is Jonathan Black (yes, from our plant) is, unfortunately, still of the opinion that I am a eunuch. He's been trying to get me to party with the rest of the men when resting behind the front lines. Fortunately for him, it hasn't worked yet." If it was anyone else, Jade would have laughed her ass off and stated bluntly that they were lying, but Neil was not known to be able to lie to her. The biggest occasion when he lied was probably in response to "What's that bulge in the back pocket of your trousers?" He's said, fidgeting and sweating bullets, that it was nothing important… and later that night he'd proposed. Of course, Jade had teased him about his earlier statement… after accepting.

Jade started work on her response right away, writing about how proud she was that their older daughter had made it into the number one post-secondary institution for women in North America at fifteen years of age. She also talked about how Jane was following in Hannah's footsteps as far as being absurdly inventive went, though she seemed more managerial as opposed to full strategic and business sense. Finally Jade wrote of how much she missed Neil and hoped he'd be safe and back home soon, and that the business was expanding slowly as they received more orders for the WSM design. She finished with her customary "Love, Jade Shepard" before folding it and putting the letter in the envelope, she would drop it by the post office when she went back into Toronto for work tomorrow. Managing a plant wasn't easy for a woman these days, but the workers, mostly old hands or women, obeyed her and kept the new men from making a fuss of any sort. She also had to deal with irritating men when it came to signing contracts and such, but she was alright… she just hoped Neil came back alright too.

* * *

><p><em>November 12<em>_th__, 1918…_

Twelve-year-old Jane Shepard opened the door with a knife concealed in her lab coat, looking up at the soldier before her warily. "Dear, we would like to inform you…"

The soldier found himself held up against the door frame before he was aware of it "What happened to my Dad?" The little but now monstrously frightening redheaded girl demanded with flames seemingly blazing behind her brown eyes.

"He… he was shot, shot yesterday, but he'll be okay, pulled another crazy stunt to save the lives of his men and got even more medals for it." The man ground out before being dropped unceremoniously.

"Well that's not so bad, then, thanks for telling us." Jane stated cheerfully, the soldier's eye twitching once before he nodded understanding. "Good day to you sir, I'll tell my mother."

He nodded "Good day to you too young lady." Then he left the home, sweating bullets still, no wonder Neil Shepard was crazy enough to win so many medals… it ran in the family, even his daughter had it.

* * *

><p>Hannah Shepard spent five whole years at Radcliffe College doing "insane things" according to peers. She spent nights drawing up dozens of schematics, published several papers on rocketry, applications of electromagnetism and other physicschemistry subjects, and shocked all her professors with her sheer genius. In addition to tearing her way through physics and chemistry courses, she also invested time into learning management and acting. Hannah was warm and friendly with her peers but people considered her a bit distant from her surroundings, as if she was somehow aloof, ethereal…

Hannah was rarely seen extremely angry or rather upset at all, but when the papers reported the Battle of the Somme she burnt it after reading and seeing photos of the "tanks" deployed by the British. She cursed at the photo until it was ashes in the ashtray and then sitting back down at her dorm desk, muttering how bad the arrangement was and how a traversing turret was so much more practical to bring all weapons to bear at once. She lightened up considerably after the first Renault Light Tank photos came out though… That was when she decided to invest time into studying performance arts in addition to everything else. Hannah knew the war was soon to be over, especially if the fast-attack tactics she'd thought up were employed, and that returning soldiers would, along with the average citizen, want entertainment. She also saw in it opportunity, to earn enough money to found the business she'd always wanted to. The best way to fight a war was short, to reduce casualties and attrition damage to units, she knew that, and she wanted to put it into practice, to save the lives of countless men in the next war by using smarter tactics instead of the meat grinder that was trench warfare. She saw the days of massed tank offensives coming, and knew that if she didn't find a way to change the course of history, when the angry defeated nations lashed back at the victors, well, France could well be overrun within a month if Germany launched a surprise attack with better tanks…

Hannah relied on her activated charcoal gas mask during the Spanish Flu days right after the war, noting the use of aircraft and bombing in reports on the war, contemplating the practicality of fielding floating airfield-ships and drawing up a few rough sketches, but nothing more than that. She knew that no one would be interested in another war for at least a decade, until the next recession, so she planned accordingly. The beginning of the large-scale movie industry provided her with a tremendous opportunity. Observing the novelty attracting the hordes of sheep-people like a carcass attracts flies, she made up her mind to raise the funds she would need to open her own business by succeeding in the new industry.

Hannah's near-flawless memory and all-too-real acting also rapidly boosted her career to the stars. Her intuitive understanding of psychology and inherent persuasiveness were just add-ons to the package of razor-sharp mind, beautiful face and flawless body. By the third year of her acting career she was considering opening her own film studio, but decided against it in favour of writing her own scripts. Most of her concepts were pseudo-science fiction, but she only wrote the entire scripts of a few.

Her first self-written movie that she managed to get a studio to accept without changes that would compromise its basis was named "The Ghost in the Machine". She acted the role of the heroine in a society where computers—her name for the electronic processing machines featured in the story—were in common use and everything was networked, and someone managed to corrupt and infiltrate the system. They shut down the utilities, the government system, everything, and she and a young "hacker" (her term for computer infiltrator) had to stop them. 20th Century Fox accepted the script and produced it as a talkie, and it became a huge hit thanks to its novelty in the cinemas of 1928. Even though the costs were significant, Hannah had personally managed to sway her employers into accepting the innovative film with all its explosive and life-threatening special effects, though the latter was mainly due to "It's MY life on the line, and I'm willing to do it." She didn't even get scars from the few scratches she received from the filming. It also provided the small but steady manufacturing of her WSM Submachine Gun with some new business, as several organizations became interested in the weapon based on its performance on set. She was promoted for her innovation and began raking in money, which she mostly invested into the stock market to increase her funds in anticipation of opening her own business.

* * *

><p>AN: Yes, if you're thinking that's Live Free or Die Hard, about 79 years ahead of schedule, you're right. Think about doing that film with a bunch of Ford Model T's and similar cars, and using a model "Helicopter" as they termed it.

* * *

><p>By 1929 Hannah had done enough research to realize the stock market had inflated beyond the capabilities of the companies and there would be a crisis if people started selling. So she sold all her investments in the stock market, just in time too, and prompted her whole family to do the same. The Wall Street market crashed days after her family sold all their stocks (some say they were the domino that started it all) and Hannah returned to Canada to begin her plans of becoming the leading business woman in the world. Jane had also graduated from Radcliffe and was right there along with her older sister—both looking to still be in their late teens thanks to their family's difficulties with growing old—when they officially opened up Shepard Industries' first plant in 1931. Hannah was still producing films, though slower now, exploiting the need for escapism as the Great Depression settled in.<p>

In 1931, the two women opened their first plant that THEY owned, on the very edges of Toronto, to the west of the main city (Today southern Etobicoke) area, and at the limits of the public tram system (they actually stretched the limits by laying their own tracks to walking distance of the plant). Offering reasonable working conditions and acceptable salaries, Hannah and Jane took full advantage of the Depression's price drops and their own still-massive money reserves to make the plant fully modernized with custom-designed-and-ordered, beyond-cutting-edge technology they had conceived of themselves. Later that same year their father managed to get an audience with the US Army…

* * *

><p><em>Washington, December 15, 1931<em>

"So tell me about this gun…" Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur watched the man in front of him carefully. Having read the record of this guy and the basic premise of the gun he was bringing to the War Department, MacArthur had decided to take a momentary vacation from the mountains of paperwork he was typically dumped with and meet this man in person "What are its specs and designation?"

"This, sirs, is the A-WBR-7.5-100A Battle Rifle" Neil Shepard gestured at the weapon he currently held "With a ten round clip fired in semi-automatic fashion, without the need to work a bolt, it offers better rate of fire than any other commonly equipped infantry weapon of modern times. With nine hundred and fifty meters or about one thousand fifty yards per second muzzle velocity, it is effective at up to six hundred meters against infantry. It may be able to accurately hit and kill more distant targets under favourable conditions, however do not expect it to."

MacArthur had his eyebrows up "Most salespeople tend to embellish as opposed to state reality, why would you insist not to try for precision fire at over six hundred meters?" He was already slightly interested in the gun from the initial report, which stated that it was rugged and reliable, but Neil Shepard was doing his sales pitch in an odd fashion…

"Like you are, sir, I was a soldier, I know that to lie to a soldier about what his weapon can do is the worst thing an officer can do. I'm saying not to shoot at over six hundred meters unless absolutely necessary because the rugged construction and reliable mechanism isn't designed completely for accuracy, and even when not continuously firing, it would take a very good sniper to take this gun up to its maximum range of twelve hundred meters and still get a clean kill." Neil stated plainly "This gun has been run over by a truck five times, buried in a snow bank for a day, submerged in mud for a night, and been tested to work after each of those treatments. If you are interested sir we could go test it right now. It even fires underwater… though range is terrible then."

MacArthur leant back and thought for a moment, he'd finished his paperwork for the week and it couldn't hurt to go outside for a break… "I want to test it personally." He stated, standing up and grabbing his overcoat as Neil nodded and did the same "If your gun passes my tests…" he held out a hand and the two men shared a handshake, knowing what the General had left unsaid. "Lead the way."

Neil did as he was asked "Understood, sir."

Shortly after reaching the range, MacArthur asked his aide to test the gun first (in case of mishaps), and then, after Neil reloaded it, demonstrating the simple procedure of popping the spent clip off, slotting in a new one, and locking it into place, held the weapon himself for the first time "By the way, Mr. Shepard, why did you choose a 7.5 millimetre calibre instead of the typical .30 cal?" He asked as he sighted down the iron sights and fired, the gun nailing a clean bulls-eye in a target three hundred yards down-range. Douglas MacArthur fired three more rounds, then he went for six hundred… aiming up just slightly to compensate for drop, and fired again for another clean bulls-eye. The next five similarly scored bulls-eyes with very low spread "Not bad, Mr. Shepard, not bad at all…" MacArthur stated as he managed to quickly reload the rifle on the first try.

"For soldiers who enjoy sniping, we have a slightly bulkier sight available, calibrated to accurate fire at direct aiming range, two hundred meters, four hundred, six hundred, eight hundred and one thousand meters. Our designers work in metric units because converting between imperial units takes more thought than metric, which works in tens. Besides, we want to have our own specialized munitions designs to field."

"Well, it makes sense, what rounds are we using here?" MacArthur asked as he found the round he was currently using were indeed not accurate to much more than twelve hundred yards, and not reliably accurate at over one thousand in his hands.

"Those are standard Armour-Piercing bullets, we also offer high explosive rounds, however those are less reliable when dealing with obstructions to the barrel."

"Obstructions?" MacArthur raised an eyebrow "show me."

"Understood sir, I'll just use the built-in maintenance kit to introduce the obstruction…" He drew out a metal rod slightly more than half a meter long "The barrel is one hundred calibres in length, this is two-thirds of that, so it can be used for barrel-cleaning, though the back part will need to be cleaned after disassembly if you use this. Still, if you're cleaning your gun, might as well have it disassembled anyways." Neil took out the clip and bullet before shoving the gun barrel-first into the snow repeatedly, before packing it in somewhat using the rod. "This is probably the largest obstruction a soldier can happen to not notice." He explained "The mechanism is closed-in, so if the gun's loaded like normal and the safety's on, it should not be dirtied… much" He dropped the gun mechanism-first into the dirty snow, then picked it up, shook it off and loaded it. Then he fired it, though the first shot was quite off target, the next few worked fine at three hundred yards, and from the fifth shot onward six hundred was acceptable. "We left two of these guns in a septic tank, and that's a sewage tank, by the way, for a month and they still worked after shaking them off a couple times." Neil commented. "The High Explosive rounds might blow up if the barrel is too obstructed, whereas armour-piercing would just clear the barrel."

"Consider it sold, Mr. Shepard, consider it sold…" MacArthur stated slowly "Alright, I'll sign a contract with you for one thousand of these… in a month if all the testers report it's good then expect to become an official supplier of the United States Army. What's the unit price for one of these things and the price of the ammunition?"

"Each standard sales unit of the A-WBR-7.5-100A costs—"

"What does the code stand for anyways?" MacArthur thought to ask.

"It's intended for the Army, hence A, it's a weapon, hence W, BR is Battle Rifle, 7.5 is calibre in millimetres and 100 is calibres for the barrel length, A means it's the first production model with above traits."

MacArthur nodded in understanding "Makes sense… so what's the price?"

"Fifty dollars per unit, with the maintenance kit built in and ten ammunition clips."

MacArthur frowned but only for a moment "Not a terrible deal considering quality… and the fact that it is patented and all. Where's the order form?"

Neil produced it and a pen from his pocket, plus a writing clipboard from inside his jacket "Here sir."

"Thanks…" MacArthur wrote down his order and signed, filling the paperwork out methodically before giving it back to Neil "I'll be seeing you some other time, most likely to sign a bigger order."

"Thank you for your time General…" Neil shook the man's hand before tilting his head slightly.

MacArthur only took a brief moment to realize what Neil wanted "Oh, this gun is included in the one thousand, Mr. Shepard… I should add that as a tail note…" He did just that on the order form before handing everything back to Neil. The men exchanged a handshake and salute before MacArthur gave Neil a ride to the train station to head back home.

"Why does Hannah always have to be right?" Neil pondered aloud on the train, looking down at the empty briefcase he'd brought the rifle (in parts), ammunition and the user manual in "Why did she just KNOW they were going to ask for one thousand guns to test with? Ah well… it's good to see my little girl making her own way in life."

It was the first major sale Shepard Industries had. It was the harbinger of a new age, a herald of things to come. Though the world did not know it, its history had already been irrevocably changed from a timeline that could have been.

* * *

><p>AN: Hannah may seem to be a bit of a Mary Sue, but I guarantee you that she will not be referred to as such. Instead, in this timeline, in later decades, people referred to heroines as "Hannah Shepard" as opposed to "Mary Sue" for the adjective. **Though she may be a genius, the observations and such she makes are things that any coolly logical intelligent person **_**could**_** have made given available information**. Other than her occasional bad vibes she gets (like her dad with that dugout) she's not supernatural, and her way of doing business may seem odd but in the long run… it profits, it profits big time.

REVIEW!


	2. I Will Heed My Calling

A/N: Believe it or not, 1930s metallurgy could produce things SO far ahead of what the designers and engineers used… so here we go.

Sorry to say that other projects are secondary for now… I already have 4.5 chapters of this one written and am working at a rate of 1 chap per 3 days… IMHO best I can in Grade 12 year…

* * *

><p>Chapter 2: I Will Heed My Calling<p>

_Shepard Industries Headquarters, Toronto, Ontario, July 21, 1936_

Hannah Shepard and Jane Shepard read the newspaper spread out before them with intent interest as Jade Shepard, now officially part of the "Family Business" and Neil watched their daughters from across the breakfast table. "Well? Any plans?" Neil asked first.

"Only too many, I've been itching to try out my armoured warfare doctrine." Hannah stated "This may give me a chance, I already have an argument ready to use on Prime Minister King should Canada need to get in another war before Germany does something dumb again. Dad, if you could find a way to get an audience and bring me along… I'll be able to persuade him into fielding an expeditionary force in the midst of this Great Depression of ours."

Neil frowned "Why an expeditionary force?"

"Have you noticed no one has been willing to buy our APCs or Light Tanks in very large quantities? The 5-ton armoured trucks are fairly popular but the same cannot be said for the APCs and LTs. I need to find a way to prove my gear to be superior to everyone else's, which I know is true." Hannah stated "45 kilometres per hour over all sorts of terrain is far more than other armoured vehicles currently available, with a typical range of 360 kilometres on a single tank of fuel, not counting additional fuel carried, and at least SIX TO EIGHT CENTIMETERS OF RHA" That stood for Rolled Homogeneous Armour aka hardened steel "ON EACH SIDE! It's true of both the A-APC-1935A and A-LT-1936A. The problem is, no one else is smart enough to realize the potential of armoured warfare… So I have to show them. Don't worry dad, my speech to King will be a lot more logical."

"Right, so which side are you going to take, Nationalist or Republican?" Jade asked.

"I still need to do more research…"

Ten days later, Hannah concluded that she would take the Republican side since "The Nationalists are mostly upper-class monarchists and fascists, and though I support some socialism, that means democracy is a must. I don't like the Republicans being communist-leaning but it's better than having more allies for Hitler. Spain would likely be at least neutral if it were Republicans that won." She concluded, gesturing to a map of Europe she had pinned on the wall of her office in the main manufacturing compound of Sheppard Industries. She had many extra buildings that were left empty but maintained, in anticipating of ramping up production when the next war came, and that looked to be looming ever nearer. "I'm planning on outfitting a total of forty-eight thousand troops hand-picked from among the recruits off the streets to fight. Discipline will be difficult to begin with, but I'll hammer them into line after I persuade King to let me recruit and train them. Dad, can you get us an audience? Tell King that you are bringing someone who will be the solution to all the nation's economic troubles…"

"Well I'll see if I can do anything, King is known for respecting war veterans… and Victoria Cross medallists. I even talked on that broadcast last Armistice Day, so he'll probably accept, not like he doesn't like visitors that offer solutions. I even have a pass to get past his secretaries who weed out most of the visitors they find unsuitable." Out of sheer desperation for the economy Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King had adopted an open-doors policy for those with solutions, though almost all had to pass through his secretaries first to get to him. Neil was one of the few war veterans and other certified people with a direct pass to enter with only security guards noting them. "But I'll send him a telegram."

Within a few days a telegram came back "By all means, bring your solution… if you think it's good it's got to be pretty good… God knows we could use a solution here. Bring the laughs you promised too if you don't mind, my face has been long for so long I fear I'm becoming a mule."

"…And that's why he got re-elected. He has a way of being everyone's best friend." Hannah commented upon being shown the telegram.

* * *

><p><em>Parliament, Ottawa, August 15<em>_th__, 1936_

Getting into Parliament was not difficult. Getting into William Lyon Mackenzie King's office was similarly not difficult (for Neil). Waiting for him to stop laughing and chuckling at the fact that Neil had brought him a young woman (his guards casually making some sort of comment about mistresses didn't help), now THAT was difficult. "Sir, I am serious, my daughter has the solution to our current economic troubles."

"Alright… alright…" King chortled some more "You were right, Mr. Shepard, this did lift my spirits a bit…" He clasped his hands together on the desk "so, what do you suggest, Miss Shepard?"

"As you know, sir, Spain is having a Civil War at the moment." Hannah began.

"I would imagine I would know that." King stated airily.

"The massive unemployment rate in the cities and the farmers leaving farms due to loss of money and crashing grain prices can be all remedied by one thing: Let me recruit and hand-pick thirty-six thousand men, take them off the streets, and take them to Spain."

"Are you suggesting I fund an expeditionary force in the middle of the greatest Depression in history?" King asked, slightly bemused. "And after Britain and France agreed on non-interference?"

"I only ask you sir to pay the men and handle logistics fees, I am willing to provide the trucks, Armoured Personnel Carriers and Light Tanks needed to outfit such a force, as well as half of all ammunition costs during training. Consider this: The fielding of an expeditionary force will directly remove many from unemployment just with the logistics support our country will give. It will increase demand for grains somewhat and encourage farmers to go back to work, and stirring patriotism encourages people to stay on their jobs. I have some tactics that will ensure we lose less than one percent of the men we send overseas, and with glowing reports of victories and few casualties, few would protest the war as it opens up more jobs, including shipping lanes over the Atlantic." Hannah stated "If you would like to, I could go over these tactics I plan to employ and explain them. As for Britain and France, they aren't seeing the signs of German aggression, they're forgetting that feeding a wolf does not necessarily pacify it, it will be bolder than ever. Hitler wants living space for his people, when the lands of the world are already claimed by various governments, the only way he can get living space is by attacking someone else. Germany has a grudge against France and Britain, and us, it is going to start another war sooner or later…"

"You make a lot of sense… As for the tactics, Miss Shepard, as Prime Minister, all the bad news in the country comes to me, I would love a break, please go ahead."

"Thank you, sir." Hannah nodded politely before bringing forth a sheaf of papers "This lists the organization and equipment for the three types of Brigades I plan on fielding at this time. As you can see on this diagram, my field-tested tanks, and armoured personnel carriers, which have been known to, albeit slower, run even with tree branches stuck in the wheels, can use superior speed, firepower and armour to rapidly encircle and entrap any enemy before pounding them to dust with their guns. They are able to fire on the move far better than any other tank can manage, so they can also fight battleship-style. Thick armour will protect them from any anti-tank gun currently available assuming ranges above point-blank. Truck-mounted infantry can fight in the same manner as massed armour, though they will have to be against softer targets. These tactics are designed to achieve rapid breakthroughs and victory with minimal friendly casualties. Don't worry about breakdowns, sir, my vehicles are all engineered to be very reliable, I've used Northern Ontario for testing, and the tanks and APCs have managed to navigate the peat bogs of the Hudson Bay region and the winter forests of Northern Ontario without breaking down."

"Hmm… your plan is just audacious, mad, and logical enough all in one that it might just work. I've seen newspaper reports and the government files on how they hire your company to test bridges in the major highways all across the eastern half of Canada. I know how seven out of the ten vehicles you leased us made the whole trip without breaking down once, and no vehicle broke down more than once. Your claim of testing them in the woods actually sounds plausible…"

"Jane was instructed specifically to not pamper her vehicles too much, so I guess you have an idea on how reliable they are…" Hannah shrugged. "I believe making a partial war effort will re-inject some life into the economy, maybe be the spark that gets everything rolling again. Besides, the Spanish Civil War is of great strategic importance, not only to us but also to Britain and America, our two largest trade partners and allies."

King raised an eyebrow "Oh? Please explain."

"Yes sir, in March this year Germany occupied the Rhineland against the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler obviously has aspirations beyond just reclaiming that, since we know that losers tend to be sore losers in a war and want to get revenge. The Nationalists, the rebels in Spain, have fascist leanings. If another war broke out in Europe, they would likely assist Germany against France and Britain, and by association be our enemy. If the Republicans were involved instead, and we had helped them, they would either help us or at least stay neutral, avoiding a two-front war for France, or be providing more troops to fight Germany out of gratitude for our help, especially if we manage to secure an alliance with them."

"You make a lot of sense, Miss Shepard, with that argument. However the funds required to outfit the force with thousands of vehicles…"

"Will be on me, from all my investing in the boom years and acting career, in addition to the large profits I made off the US Army, I can afford to field those vehicles, what I can't afford are the fuel, pay and logistical fees." Hannah stated bluntly.

King smiled sincerely, he liked being to the point "Alright, what's in it for you as a business person? Don't give me the 'Oh I'm a patriot' crap, we all know something's in it for you." He had found out from Neil who actually owned Shepard Industries the last time they'd seen each other. As PM, it was routine to meet the most decorated war veterans every two years.

"You're right, my armoured vehicles aren't favoured by other militaries because they think they're too heavy, or the price tag I put on them too expensive, or they haven't realized the usefulness of massed armoured vehicles yet. The US purchased a significant number of APCs for command vehicles, but other than that no one else really wants to buy them in quantity, thanks to their quality and pricing. With success in Spain I can prove to the world that Shepard Industries fields the best in the modern world in terms of armoured units. It will be a great sales promotion. Just to tell you, Mr. King, we will be flying the Shepard Industries flag, the red Maple Leaf with Bars, while in Spain, so you needn't worry about direct political backlash. You can just say that it's a government-subsidized Private Military Company that has decided to get involved. And don't worry, I love Canada as much as you do, I'm not about to do anything stupid to our country."

King's mouth was half-open to speak "An interesting proposition… and I assume you'll be ramping up employment and production at your compound near Toronto? And purchasing high-quality steel from Hamilton?"

"I own a smelting center near there, only the assembly and fine-tuning of parts is really near Toronto. So we're dealing with two major cities, major unemployment centers, here. That's just direct effect. Setting up a camp in Quebec will create jobs in the area, I'm suggesting directly east of Montreal… so that we can deal with some jobs in that area. Obviously, with more shipping, the ports on the east coast will reduce unemployment. This is a win-win situation for all of us, Mr. King."

King shrugged "Unless you fail to achieve success in Spain, yes."

Hannah grew more serious "Sir, if you don't believe in my tactics, I will gladly demonstrate with my test drivers and some of the trained workers I have, forty men, against a brigade of whatever you can bring to bear on them. A simulation battle that takes into account how cavalry cannot penetrate tanks no matter what they do, and that machine-guns will tear unarmoured targets into badly butchered meat."

King held up a hand "Don't worry, Miss Shepard, I am not refuting your plan, in fact, I'm approving it, I'm giving you the stamp of approval to use that governmental land and conduct training operations on it. However, you have to get the men into action within the next six months, I can't justify experimenting for more than that long."

"If you can find us suitable transports to cross the sea, I can have them in action against the Nationalists in five months, provided you can get the message to the Republicans that vehicles and men with the red maple leaf with bars logo are friendly. I won't let you down, sir." She stated earnestly.

"I believe you, now let me just get these documents ready for you. How many of these vehicles you list as having to equip your troops with do you currently have?"

"I have exactly sixty Light Tanks and sixty Armoured Personnel Carriers, along with a few hundred trucks in warehouse. It will be enough to start training operations according to my plans. Give me a month to pick the recruits with exams of character, and test them for venereal diseases just to prevent epidemics, and I'll have production high enough to fulfil the thousand-plus tanks and other vehicles I will need to fully equip my men by the time we need to leave. I'll be recruiting a lot of workers, Mr. King, so expect to feel the repercussions in unemployment rates within two months. I might have to ask for subsidies, but it's hardly a completely outrageous project in cost. The best thing is that many men are willing to work for a dollar a day these days, and the troops aren't going to have much to spend it on or need to spend it in an army I'll run, so when we come back expect the money to come back too."

"Let me make a phone call…" After a chat with the treasury, he hung up "Here's a deal, Hannah, I'll lend you half the amount it would cost to buy the vehicles, if the unemployed number drops by more than three hundred thousand within two years in association with your efforts, then that money is yours." King was drawing up the relevant documents "But if not, you're going to eventually have to pay it off, accounting for inflation." He shoved the document across the desk at her after doing the calculations on a piece of scrap paper as to what the vehicles would cost him.

"Excellent, this more than covers the cost of building the vehicles and the raw materials…" Hannah stated as they shook hands. Neither mentioned the implied fact that Hannah charged more than twice the build price when she sold a vehicle, or how efficient that meant Hannah's metallurgical processes had to be.

"Well I expect you're going to be a hero figure for women everywhere, it hasn't been that long since they earned the vote after all… it's been good meeting you, Miss Shepard, I look forward to getting good news soon."

* * *

><p><em>Crown Lands East of Montreal, August 29<em>_th__, 1936_

Hannah had managed to grab thirty-two thousand (minor change of mind and numbers) unemployed men off the streets of Toronto and Hamilton in a startlingly short time, mainly because she put all her hundreds of old-timer workers to helping with interviews for those who passed the exams, giving them pay bonuses for the extra work. She also left Jane to starting to expand operations on both ends into some of the empty land and facilities Shepard Industries owned on both ends. Neil was to be the figurehead in construction and direction of the training camp, since unfortunately Hannah's figure was too well-developed to hide practically in the summer time. Besides, the men respected a man who'd won the Victoria Cross plus other assorted honours in the last major war.

Neil read off the speech Hannah had wrote for him. He could have memorized it, but Hannah told him there would be too many lectures and speeches he and the "old hands" would have to do for it to be useful. "Alright men, you are the best thirty-two thousand men in the ones who showed up at the recruitment centers. You are here because you are willing to defend democracy against those who would destroy it, you are here because you willingly signed up to serve in the all-professional force that is Shepard Industries' Combat Arm. You are here because you are willing to serve your country through a subsidized business. You are here because you need money for food for your families, AM I RIGHT, SOLDIERS? By the way, the response is 'Sir, yes Sir!' for those who do not know…"

"Sir yes Sir!" The men gathered in the large assembly field chorused.

"Now, your trainers will teach you all sorts of things you may find unconventional, but remember that it will save your ass someday." Neil read rather loudly "Room and board are included, so you don't need to worry, if you need something, report it to one of the logistics officers and we'll see what we can do for you. We have a package sitting on each bed in the cabins." King had paid for the construction crews "Those selected for officer training in the letters we gave each and every one of you, please follow this young woman here." He gestured to Hannah who waved from her position beside Neil as the officers followed her to the map rooms and lecture halls that constituted officer training areas. "The rest of you, please find your cabins and claim your beds before assembling before your cabins. You will have one trainer per company of men, follow their orders and listen to the lectures, and most importantly, READ THE BOOKLETS THEY GIVE YOU! ALL OF THEM! If you get sick, report it to them, if there's anything you don't know, ASK. If you need help with an idea, you're probably not the only one, go to them. The training here will be hard, but it's better than being unemployed, and you're getting free room and board. Now, men, head to your cabins according to your company number, find your bunks according to the other numbers such as platoon and squad, and claim a bed, then be out and assembled within ten minutes. Your trainers will know what to do."

Meanwhile, in the officers' lecture room, the one with the largest map, Hannah was giving a lecture "You will bunk with the soldiers you will be commanding or working with, however you are expected to learn every single thing I will be teaching you. Yes, believe it, I will be the one teaching you. When you signed the contract, you were sworn to secrecy in things that I instruct you to keep classified. I instruct you to keep my identity classified from the men. You will abide by the schedules here, line up and pick them up according to your rank." The men obeyed, though they grumbled "Alright, you should have your notebooks and pencils packets waiting for you in class when you come to your first lecture…" Business went on from there.

Training at the camp comprised of, for the first two months, eight hours of scheduled sleep each day, from 2200 to 0600, with breakfast lasting one hour, from 0600 to 0700. That was followed by three 90 minute periods with 5 minutes between each period, before lunchtime at 1140 to 1200, after that came four more periods of 90 minutes each with, again, 5-minute periods to get between classes. Then came dinner from 1815 to 1900, followed by extra tactical exercises for the men and, every Wednesday and Saturday, War Games for the soldiers until 2030. The 90 minutes left was review and study time for the soldiers, when every class and lecture room was open and the teachers would answer questions.

Later, during the month-long Hardening Period as Hannah called it, they had every Weekend, plus every Wednesday, running on a different schedule. From 0000 to 0615 there would be four periods of classes that were purely physical and practical instead of theory, from 0615 to 0700 would be dinner and then the troops were allowed to sleep until 1100, they were then awoken for breakfast at 1100-1130, then put through three more periods, until 1610, when they would be allowed to sleep until 1900 and woken up by their trainers for lunch to 2050 hours, followed by two theory and tactical lecture periods, ending the day at 2355 when they would need to rush to their next activity. This was designed so that the troops would be more used to the nasty schedules combat often imposed, though Hannah was careful to give her troops enough total sleep to keep their health up.

The soldiers didn't like the Hardening Period much, but they all agreed that the three-month camp had taught them a huge amount about how to survive in battle, with at least one theoretical lecture each day. They endured practical exercises such as sharpshooting from firing ports in the armour plates of trucks and crawling under barbed wire coverage while machine-gun fire whizzed overhead at random intervals—no one was stupid enough to get killed, at least Hannah's entrance exam had ensured that—and firing tank guns on the move, as well as others. The men hammered out a functional command and fire support structure, or rather, the few kinks Hannah had yet to smooth out, and the soldiers learnt how to use their units, in addition to quite possibly being in command of lost friendly troops. In a way, officer training was part of every man's life in the eight 4000-men Brigades that were being trained, and when they understood at last, every man was thankful for all their training.

Some of the most clearly remembered lessons involved Hannah and her teaching the Brigade-level officers how things worked. For example… "You are expected to report in as to your brigade's logistical, reinforcement, and other needs, as well as strength, location, and status of supplies. Remember to identify yourselves using your Brigade number. Lower officers reporting to you will report in a string of numbers, and battalions may shift around between commands in the confusion of war. You are expected to adapt to things. Now, seniority determines who gets divisional command when three or four brigades are rolled together to form a division. That Brigadier's support staff is to process information fed to them by the other two Brigade staffs, which should be in standard report form just like you would give when reporting directly to me." The officers had accepted her as their commander, though somewhat grudgingly. "Seniority, as you know, is determined by merit points which are earned in battles and exams, with battles becoming much heavier after we arrive in Spain." Then Hannah proceeded to instruct the Brigade officers on Motorized Infantry Doctrine, Mechanized Infantry Doctrine, and Light Tank Doctrine. Each officer had to know all three doctrines since "In the chaos of battle, our units will often form the spearhead for allied units, hence you need to know how to fight in any method that is needed." They were also lectured on Entrenchment Doctrine and Urban Warfare Doctrine, as well as everything else Hannah could think of that they could need.

In November, Hannah got a telegram from King, stating "Excellent work General Shepard, and yes, I am actually proud to be calling you the first female General in the history of the world, the crowds of unemployed on the streets have already begun to thin. Your project seems to be working better than the public works projects are at it, though that's in the short term, perhaps in the long run you won't create as many total jobs, but it would be stupid of me not to acknowledge your ability to create jobs. The media took the idea of sending an expeditionary force to defend democracy and our way of life fairly well, though I think they're just glad there are more jobs now. To feed, clothe and equip those men, along with the men themselves, you've already managed to create about 100,000 jobs through all sectors of the economy, with only 4000 new employees in your company's direct pay, you are one smart woman… I may be rambling, General, but good job so far, keep up the good work!" She replied simply that she would and that he should expect another two hundred thousand jobs to be created within the next two years, to reach her goal, and even more whenever Hitler finally decided to be an idiot.

It wasn't long before December rolled around and the men shipped out after three months and a bit of training and learning. As they assembled one last time, all of them together, Neil acted as Hannah's mouthpiece again, with a speech. "This is a speech from your General in command of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, so listen up: My friends, my brothers in arms! Three months and some have you studied the coursed I planned out for you, in these three months you have become a fighting force unlike any the world has ever seen, combining firepower, mobility, armour, and intelligence into a force to be reckoned with! We shall show the world that Canada is not weak, and that YOU are STRONG! You have learnt everything currently known to mankind that will help you stay alive, and I have faith that you will come back home alive and as heroes!" Neil paused "So that's what the General has to say, now please organize by squads, platoons, companies, battalions and brigades to board the trains waiting to take us to Halifax where you will set off for Spain. Good luck, men, I will see you again when you return."

There were many roars of agreement from the eight brigades of men, thirty-two thousand of them, at that. Then they calmed down to a low chatter as their officers led them to the trains waiting for them. One hour later, the first trains departed with the first soldiers of what would become known as the greatest Private Military Company to ever exist.

* * *

><p>SHEPARD INDUSTRIES DOCTRINE: MOTORIZED INFANTRY DOCTRINE<p>

ORGANIZATION: (Identical to Mechanized and Light Tank Brigades)

4000 Men Brigade, 10 Command Crew and 90 Multi-Purpose (also MP, Military Police), 4 Battalions Attached

975 Men Battalion, 5 Command Crew, 40 MP, 5 Companies

186 Men Company, 3 Command Crew, 7 MP, 4 Platoons

44 Men Platoon, 2 Command Crew, 6 MP, 4 Squads

9 Men Squad, 1 Command, 8 MP

CRITICAL NOTE: Command Crews are not permitted to reside in the same vehicles, even conferences should if at all possible be conducted through radio to decentralize command in combat and offer greater survivability of organization. Hence the MPs, they are to serve as crews for the vehicles issued to Command and MP groups at each level of organization above Platoon.

SUMMARY: Replacing typical infantry units of other militaries, Shepard Industries Motorized Infantry gives infantry a whole new mobility, flexibility, fire-support and fast-attack concept.

EQUIPMENT ISSUED:

Standard Heavy Infantry Kits: A-WBR-7.5-100A (7.5mm Battle Rifle), A-WSM-10-40B (10mm SMG), A-WP-10-15A (10mm Pistol), 3x A-WG-300-1935A (Grenade, 300g with 80% mass explosives), Combat Knife, Gas Mask, First Aid Kit. 90 rounds carried for BR, 80 for SMG, 30 (3 clips) for Pistol. Please note that due to the framework nature of the clip casings, they are not as heavy as solid blocks to carry.

SQUAD: One (1) A-TW-5-1935A (5-ton Truck) Per Squad

PLATOON LEVEL: Two (2) A-APC-1935A (Armoured Personnel Carrier), 1 A-WAG-60-20A (60mm Mortar) Issued To Command Section

COMPANY LEVEL: Two (2) A-APC-1935A, One (1) A-T-1936A (Light Tank) Issued To Command Section

BATTALION LEVEL: Two (2) A-APC-1935A, Two (2) A-T-1936A, Five (5) A-TW-5-1935A, Three (3) A-WAG-100-55A (100mm Howitzer, truck-bed-mounted) Issued to Command Section

BRIGADE LEVEL: Twelve (12) A-APC-1935A, Seven (7) A-T-1936A Issued to Command Section.

TOTAL: 340 A-TW-5-1935A (trucks), 220 A-APC-1935A (APCs), 35 A-T-1936A (Light Tanks), 80 A-WAG-60-20A (Mortars, truck bed mounted), 12 A-WAG-100-55A (Howitzers, truck bed mounted).

DOCTRINE:

Motorized Infantry are effectively infantry on wheels, though they have access to machine-gun support from the two 12.5mm machine guns on each 5-ton Truck and can use the squad truck for an improvised bunker against enemy small-arms thanks to its plating. Each Platoon, the smallest unit of manoeuvre, will have one of its trucks, with two MPs added to it to operate the mortar, re-legated to artillery support. The mortar is designed to be mountable in a truck bed and the roof of the truck can be opened for this practice, though caution should be taken so that no one can throw in a grenade through the open roof. The 60mm mortar is capable of providing support at up to 3500m distant (about 3800 yards). In Company-Level and below operations, calling in fire support whenever a fortified position is encountered is always the best choice. If no fire support is available, long-ranged fire with the very accurate and high-powered 40mm guns of APCs and Light Tanks will most often suffice in removing an obstacle. However if this is not adequate, then drawing on the Battalion-level artillery may be in order. The howitzers are designed so that trucks can withstand the limited recoil of their firing, and will handle almost any obstacle. Anything that their 100mm shells cannot penetrate will likely be costly enough that few are deployed, or are immobile, and thus can be outflanked and left in the dust by the vehicles. Obviously, this means heavy Bunkers or super-heavy armoured vehicles, the latter of which have not been invented yet.

Some of the more critical principles are listed here: Maintain a loose formation, even if there are relatively dense walls of vehicles on the outside, to reduce damage from surprise air strikes or artillery attacks, while still having a solid perimeter. Even when mobile, maintain a loose formation, when crossing bridges, cross as quickly as manageable, though the pontoon bridge construction option (when pontoons can be acquired) is mainly for trucks, as the pontoons assembled and disassembled in the field are not strong enough to hold APCs or LTs, which must go under the river. Move quickly, and buy fuel whenever you see a gas station, top off your tanks, if you expect to be away from gas stations for more than about a day, bring even MORE spare fuel (normal Spare Fuel supply adds up to each vehicle carrying 300% of the full tank's worth of fuel, get even MORE if you can.) in the backs of your trucks, in canisters, barrels, whatever you can get that can stay sealed and not make a mess. Brigade officers are to receive all receipts and refund the gas stations in question from funds allocated to them, with the other officers present as witnesses, failure to do so will result in punishment from the General as per the Shepard Industries Soldiers' Code of Conduct, and yes, the gas station owners will be randomly interviewed as to the amount of payment received and investigations will occur if the numbers don't match up.

When engaging enemy infantry or cavalry forces, Motorized Infantry are to use bunkered truck tactics (put up the thin roof plating and close the rear doors) and fire out mainly through slits while the two machine-gunners onboard provide heavier fire. The APCs and Light Tanks are to use their main guns for effect and machine guns for mowing. However, it is STRONGLY recommended that even with bunkering tactics that you maintain your distance from your slower foes, to maximize your effectiveness and limit the effectiveness of any satchel charges they may have. Keeping distance should be very easy for you, against infantry you can even stop for occasional breaks so that your onboard troops can get better accuracy.

When engaging enemy armoured units, it is essential that APCs and Light Tanks take the front of the formation while the trucks engage less armoured targets that their guns can handle. The long 40mm guns of your armoured vehicles will easily tear through any tanks currently known to be in use. Since armour thickness is uniform all-round for your units, a fighting retreat is very practical and can keep your distance while you rely on the superior range and hitting power of your guns to take the enemy out without any friendly losses, not even to infantry, supporting the enemy armour, with satchel charges.

When under attack from aerial units, stay on the move and keep changing directions while firing back at them. Modern aircraft will not survive a direct hit from a 40mm shell, or enough hits from a 12.5mm machine gun. If you see a plane diving at you, fire everything you have at it and keep moving in a figure-eight pattern with the occasional circle if you wish to stay in the same general area. If you are under fire while moving, seek cover in the form of forested areas if at all possible, or move in zigzag patterns to throw off the aim of dive bombers. However, if engaging high-altitude level bombers, in the event of not having air support, if you see a line of blasts stitching their way toward you GET OUT OF THE WAY!

Urban combat scenarios present a unique challenge in that Shepard Industries soldiers are not intended to be wasted in the meat grinder that is urban warfare. Small villages can be surrounded, sniped at and if needed levelled, however any buildings more than one floor tall present a hazard. If a city needs to be taken, set up positions around it and snipe down the defenders day and night, though caution must be taken against possible counter-attacks. Artillery strikes are to be employed in runway bombardment if airfields are present regardless of urban or not warfare, destroy any enemy aircraft and hangars observed if at all possible. Remember Conservation of Ammunition: Employ your 40mm tank guns with long-range sniping of enemy aircraft if they're alone and within five or six kilometres, on the ground, in line of fire of your armour, one plane's not worth expending a 100mm shell on. On the other hand if a cluster is sighted bombard them to scrap. If truly needed, each squad is comprised of a three-man Truck Crew plus a six-man Ground Crew for a reason, the six-man ground crew is for house-to-house combat while the truck crew suppress anything else that needs to be suppressed.

100mm howitzer fire should be able to reach any area of a city or other field of engagement, as 55 calibres offer a maximum 27km range, or 17 miles, though they are not accurate to within more than about 50 meters of target (0.17% spread) at this range under average conditions. Ensure your howitzers can reach engagement envelopes of all your units at all times, which means no units should stray further than 25km from the howitzers (assuming accurate tank/light artillery engagement ranges of 4 kilometres) keep this in mind when coordinating your artillery support and you will do fine. However, you should note that it is not wise to spread your 4000 men over an area more than about 2 kilometres in radius most of the time, or you may be overrun.

When supporting friendly forces, most likely infantry, expect your Platoon Mortar Trucks, Howitzer Trucks, Armoured Personnel Carriers and Light Tanks to be delegated to either heavy fire support or ultra-heavy assault duty. After all, despite their designations, your APCs and LTs are among the heaviest practical tanks fielded these days, and will likely be requested for use in anti-bunker work. If the bunker is equipped with anti-tank guns able to punch through a lesser tank (those equipped by your allies) from stem to stern, DO NOT AGREE, instead, set up your howitzers at the point-blank range of five kilometres and use what is effectively direct fire to level the anti-tank gun position. If not equipped with anti-tank weapons, go ahead, 60mm of armour plating on APCs and 80mm of steel on LTs will keep out anything other than anti-tank rounds or artillery shells.

The three phrases that every Motorized Infantry commander must employ are "Hit and Run", "Breakthrough and Encircle" and "Fire Support".

* * *

><p>AN: You may want to note the next part down somewhere since I will be using quite a few serial numbers for initial introductions ("Behold, the blah-blah-blah, an (informal term)") of weapons platforms and such, though things will be referred to by colloquial terms most of the time even by users i.e. soldiers/pilots/sailors.

* * *

><p>SHEPARD INDUSTRIES DICTIONARY<p>

Serial Numbers are in 3 or 4 parts depending on what the topic is.

PART 1: Branch of Service, most relevant in Combined Arms Operations.

A=Army, N=Navy, V= Air Force, S=Support System

PART 2: Type (mostly divided by branches)

T=Tank, APC=Armoured Personnel Carrier, AA= Self-Propelled Anti-Aircraft Gun, TW=Truck, ART=Self-Propelled Artillery.

F=Fighter, B=Bomber, R=Recon, C=Radar/Command, EW=Electronic Warfare, A=Attack Aircraft. H_=Chopper, _ is A or T for Attack and Transport respectively.

C_=Carrier, _ is H, M, L, E for Heavy, Medium, Light and Escort. E_= Escort, _ is D, F, C, A for Destroyer, Frigate, Corvette and Fast-Attack. L_=Landing Craft, H, L for Heavy and Light.

W is the first letter of all weapons systems, and the one or two letters after it denotes what type as follows, mostly divided by branch of service:

TC= Tank Cannon (includes AA Guns), A_=Artillery, _ is G, R for Gun and Rocket (anything less than 100mm is a mortar for Gun, 100mm and over are howitzers). LM=Land Mine. Later RG and L designate Railgun and Laser.

Air and Naval weapons are often shared, so V-W_ is really only for Bombs and missiles. Everything else is common to both: T=Torpedo, B_=Bomb, I, A, P, T for Incendiary, All-Purpose, Armour-Piercing, Thermobaric. C=Cannon (aircraft guns, also used for naval guns), NM=Naval Mine, DC= Depth Charge. M_=Missile, S, U, A, C, T for Anti-ship, Anti-sub, Anti-air, Cruise, and Anti-tank.

Infantry Weapons: MG=Machine Gun, BR=Battle Rifle, SG=Shotgun, SR=Sniper Rifle, P=Pistol, G=Grenade, M=Missile, R=Rocket, L=Launcher (add after G, M or R, in later years, anti-air is all WML while anti-ground missiles are WRL)

Support Systems:

E_=Engine, A, S, T, J for Air, Ship, Tank, Jet.

R_=Radar, L, S, A for Land, Ship, Aerial.

A_=Armour, L, A, S for Land, Air, Ship, another S if Skirt Armour.

N_= Sonar, U, S, A for Sub, Ship and Aerial.

W_= Weapons-related, S=Stability, R=Range & Precision (Firing computers), K= Recoil ("Kick") Dampening, M=Mount (usually for fixed turrets).

C_=Carrier-related, A, C, L for Arresting wires, Catapults, Elevators.

F_ =Fuel-related, T, R, P for Tanks, Refuelling Devices, Pipelines.

L_=Lubricants & Filters, W, S, T, D, G for Winter, Standard, Tropical, Dust Filter, Gas Filter.

M_=Mine-related, S, L, C for Scanner, Layer, Clearer.

V_=Visual, P, C for Periscope, Camera.

PART 3: Descriptor

Not present for most units, except trucks, transports and bombers which are rated by mass in tons. Trucks can take double their own weight in payload comfortably, transports and bombers tend to require more knowledge than just the serial, but this is typically engraved in the loading bay doors, so no worries. Many support systems such as Weapons Stability have the mass of weapon involved, while some, such as Weapons Range, have percent increase in accurate (over 90% first-shot hit ratio) range. This area of the serial number is only truly grasped by higher ranks and those specialized in a task such as carrier deck crews (connoisseurs of aircraft and some ship weapons).

For guns, as ammunition is still labelled as, say, "x (number) HE Rounds _-_ (Weapon Serial)" on the crate, this Descriptor means calibre in mm, for torpedoes, rockets, missiles and shells it is the same.

Engines are measured by 10s horsepower for everything except ship engines, 100s horsepower for ship engines.

Bombs, Depth Charges, Grenades and Mines have this in mass (kg, grams for Grenades) where 80% of mass is warhead, always.

Radar dishes and propellers have this in cm diameter.

Armour plating has this thickness in cm.

Arresting Wires and Catapults are rated by mass of aircraft they can stop or launch. Elevators are stated as AxB where A is length and B is width in meters.

Fuel Tanks rated by 10s of litres capacity. Refuelling devices and pipelines rated by cross-section diameter.

Filters rated by throughput in L/s of air.

PART 4: More Descriptor

This represents Mass in kg for Torpedoes and many other things.

Year first used is indicated for most units/weapon platforms, calibres for weapons.

Max flow rate in L/s denoted for refuelling devices and pipelines.

PART 5: Model Letter, A, B, C, etc. denotes which production model is being used, or configuration.

For example, the A-T-1936B, which made its debut in 1938, featured an A-WTC-75-60 gun in a new turret, which is 75mm and, at 60 calibres, the best anti-tank gun of the time other than the Flak-88. This is in contrast to the A-T-1936A, which had the old turret with one A-WTC-40-75 gun on each side, and did not require a loader on the crew as the gunner could handle them leisurely thanks to the five-round clips and the fact that they could be set to full auto at 150 rpm for anti-air duty.

Other examples as to how the system works are as follows:

A-WTC-110-55A = Army, Weapon, Tank Cannon, 110mm calibre, 55 calibre barrel length.

N-WT-600-2250A = Navy, Weapon, Torpedo, 600mm calibre, 2250 kg mass. Note that warhead mass is not specified, as it is not as important to the sub or ship carrying it compared to the mass of the torpedo itself. This is also the standard Shepard Industries aerial torpedo (though wing-like fold-out fins are fitted for shallow harbour work). Colloquially "2.25 ton torpedo"

N-WDC-350B = Navy, Weapon, Depth Charge, 350kg mass (so 280kg warhead), second production model. Colloquially: 350kg depth charge.

V-WBP-400A= Air Force, Weapon, Bomb, Armour-Piercing, 400kg (so 320kg warhead), First Production Model. Colloquially: 400kg AP bomb.

S-ASS-4-1937A= Support, Armour Skirts, Ship, 4 cm thick, first used in 1937 (year indicates metallurgical level for armour), first used model.

* * *

><p>AN: I know, I made a huge, logical, but still somewhat complicated system for these serial numbers, and you want me to get into the action and show how some superior tech, training, and most importantly doctrine and tactics can change the way a war goes…


	3. Rolling Thunder

A/N: We're finally coming to Spain to witness the worth of mass armoured warfare… and of course only certain countries are smart enough to take note of it, i.e. Germany. France will be as dumb as it was historically, but that's one of the few things I'm keeping to WWII history. Other things will be completely changed to pave the road for WWIII. And yes, Gunter von Esling is who you think he is.

* * *

><p>Chapter 3: Rolling Thunder<p>

_Port City of Bilbao, December 15, 1936_

Hannah Shepard smirked as she watched her troops disembark in their hundreds of armoured vehicles. Shipping, anything available and able—and there were lots of old World War One convoy ships lying around that could be modified—had been gathered in Halifax starting a week before the convoy would leave, ostensibly headed for Barcelona. All the troops had successfully been accommodated in one trip, along with enough food, fuel and munitions supplies to last them for three days in each of those, even under heavy combat conditions. The last was the most important thing she had to have shipped in, as the previous two could be obtained locally or bought from France in the case of the 95% Ethanol she needed for gasoline additive (800 horsepower aircraft engines were picky about fuel, but Ethanol soothed them into working with regular gasoline).

_I was insane to accept King's deal, but I've always done insane things…_ she thought. _Eleven million Canadians, say five and a half million men, that's about 5 million workforce, if 3.5 million men can work. Forty percent unemployed, that's 2 million people, or, if we use a narrower perspective of one male bread-winner in the family, 1.4 million men. Three hundred thousand jobs, King asked me to create even if by association to earn that huge subsidy… fifteen percent of the unemployed people, more than twenty percent of the unemployed men. I'll show him what one woman with a dream and the resources to pursue it can do…_

Her eyes narrowed slightly as her Brigadiers reported their progress before she nodded curtly, while reading the reports at near-inhuman speed. Everything was in order just like she trained them to be, good. Hannah had sunk German and Italian patrol boats, one of each, to get to her current position, running her entire convoy through the loose gauntlet of blockading ships. King had cleared things with the British and French governments before, but when one of the German patrol boats damaged one of her freighters (nothing was lost) with a warning shot, she had ordered them sunk and docked at port before anyone else could interfere. The fact that she'd parked her artillery trucks in position on the sides of the ships, their tail ends open (either tail or roof had to be at least somewhat open to accommodate the barrel of the gun) and facing outward with howitzer barrels, was very persuasive to the port authorities. "No one" had witnessed the sinking of the patrol boats, so there wouldn't be any political backlash or even much of reports other than "they ran into mines" since the ships had been pummelled by such a volley of shells that no survivors were spotted in the water.

Later it would be found that the two survivors started a minor squabble between the German and Italian fleet commanders in the area over a "friendly fire mishap". But that is another story. Hannah had diverted the Germans and Italians not only by claiming to be bound for Barcelona, but she also had "secret transmissions" about going to Malaga, much closer to Gibraltar and the front lines in southern Spain. The Germans had concentrated the destroyers they had involved, as did the Italians, at Gibraltar. King had cleared with the British and French for "Ships Flying the Maple Leaf with Bars flag of Shepard Industries (for that was its logo)" to dock anywhere in Spain.

It was amusing to hear the shock in the people as hundreds, nay, thousands, of heavily armoured vehicles, weighing a hefty thirty-five tons apiece in the case of her Tanks and APCs, rolling off the steel ramps recently installed in the ships (it had created thousands of jobs in Canada refitting old troop ships into tank-capable transports) onto the concrete piers. The unloading went smoothly, other than a minor hold-up with local police that had apparently not been informed about the arrival of allies, though the garrison had. Hannah sent orders through her radio to her forces, using the Supreme Command Channel she had set to, as a joke, 66.6 MHz, for every soldier to begin singing the _International_ as they rolled through the city to gather just south of it. That was the cue for the citizens to start cheering, shouting and celebrating from their homes as the police cleared the streets for the machines of war that rolled by, painted in mottled green and brown camouflage colours, with the soldiers standing up where possible and waving to the crowds.

During the transporting, most of the soldiers had elected to sleep inside their vehicles. The reasoning was simple: most of the seats were fairly well-cushioned and many could be reclined, especially the crew positions of the vehicles, and the suspension systems toned down the swaying of the sea slightly. Now they were rolling through the streets in relatively spacious, loosely-packed, comfortable, and eminently practical engines of destruction as civilians cheered. Over the Supreme Command Radio—every Brigade's radio sets relayed messages to subordinates, and every level after that, to make sure that the 66.6MHz signal could reach everyone even if they were spread over half a country—Hannah started giving a speech "See these happy citizens? See their tears of joy at finally getting help? This is what we fight for, what you fight for… death be to those that would bring only sorrow. Remember the Code of Conduct, remember who you are, you are here to fight against violent murderers, rapists, and the vilest of mankind. If you see soldiers murdering civilians, kill them, if they're Republicans, try not to do it where their buddies can see. If you see a man raping a woman, kill him or knock him out and take him prisoner. If you know that something is wrong, stop it. That is what we are here for, never forget that." Hannah used her more masculine voice, deepening the pitch of her speech a bit consciously to speak to the men while they were inspiring awe in the locals. After all, half of the value of an army is its presence, and her men did not present well on foot. Instead of teaching them how to march perfectly and look good, she had taught them how to move efficiently and look good in vehicles. Most of her men had sloppy salutes, but she hadn't bothered wasting time trimming that, instead having her trainers teach about a variety of positions to hold one's gun.

Now, as for her next plan, she was going to head due south to Vitoria, take the city and surrounding countryside, then wheel east to shave a chunk out of Nationalist territory and link the separate Republican territories together. It would be pointless to push against the border of Portugal, since Portugal supported the Nationalists and would allow their troops passage through Portugal to try to outflank her. The Battle of Madrid had died down temporarily by now, so she didn't need to relieve the city immediately. The largest order of business was loading up the APCs and Tanks with as many gasoline containers as could fit. She already had extra tanks of ethanol to use as additive to gasoline she would obtain, but she had already bought up all the gasoline in this city and her troops, while parading through town, were dropping by the gas stations to pick up the containers. Pillaging was strictly forbidden to her troops, except for gas stations that belonged to the enemy, civilian ones, even in enemy territory, had to be refunded. Of course, she got her funds from King and reported them to him, but this was basically her army to do with as she wished.

It took only half an hour to distribute the extra purchased gas and for the men to load up again before they proceeded southward. The 2nd and 3rd Mechanized and the 3rd and 4th Motorized Brigades were grouped as "Second Division" and sent southeast toward Pamplona at economy speed, which meant thirty-six km per hour for the armoured vehicles and forty for trucks.

First Division only took another forty minutes to reach shelling range of Vitoria with the trucks running at maximum speed, loaded down with, mostly, double their own weight as payload. The heavier armoured vehicles had fallen behind, but Hannah had transferred her command to a truck and instructed the tankers to take their time. They advanced to within 10 km of the city and then she sent out the trucks of 1st Motorized, 4th Battalion, as reconnaissance, since she didn't have any air forces available for the task. Ten minutes later they started feeding her coordinates for enemy concentrations and installations such as a few bunkers, apparent command centers/warehouses, and the city's airstrip. Five minutes later, after she got reports from all her scouts, Hannah ordered the artillery trucks to prepare to fire on some coordinates she gave them once the signal for general attack came.

Her vehicles had all been loaded down by friendly infantry from Bilbao hitching rides, bound for capturing Vitoria, so it took another half an hour for the Republican infantry to be offloaded near the city and the armoured vehicles to be arrayed, camouflaged (in Spain, though it snowed in the winter, it tended to come rather late and green-and-brown was still practical until about mid-January, after which Hannah planned on shopping for white tarps to stick to her vehicles) and out of sight from the city in question, for the assault. Another half an hour passed as the infantry snuck toward the city… The two Motorized Infantry Brigades mostly took up positions surrounding the city, while the 1st Mechanized infantry and 1st Light Tank would support the Republican troops, or rather spearhead them. At 0900 hours minus twenty seconds on December 15, Hannah went on the Supreme Command Channel again "1st Division Howitzers FIRE!" She stated simply.

At 0900 hours, as per the already-hashed-out plan, the first line of Armoured Personnel Carriers stormed toward the city perimeter, firing on the move at lesser targets while the major ones went up in explosions from 100mm howitzer shells. Non-artillery trucks then followed and turned so their sides were shown, being used as bunkers for sharpshooting by the Motorized Infantry soldiers while the Mechanized Infantry troops waited patiently inside their APCs, which were charging the city perimeter, followed by a large amount of Republican Infantry which were using the armoured behemoths as cover from the machine-gun fire that pinged uselessly off their plates. The forty-millimetre cannons of the Armoured Personnel Carriers targeted and eliminated the flashing machine guns with ruthless efficiency as they rumbled toward the barricades erected in the streets. As they came closer to the barricades, the APCs stopped and depressed their guns, the gunners opening fire with the same high explosive rounds they had been employing up to that point and blasting the barricades a few times to smash the larger pieces, before running over them. A few Molotov Cocktails shattered over the rears of the APCs from what few defenders had not been crushed or immediately shot by the men firing out of the ports in the sides, but with the Engine Covers Hannah had installed (after learning that Spain was going to need a lot of urban warfare), they did nothing to the vehicles other than scorch the paint slightly. The Republican infantry didn't appreciate the burning alcohol and gasoline sliding off the rears of the engine covers, but it was better than losing the heavy fire support they had. The APCs and soldiers inside were basically shooting everyone that popped up with a weapon in the buildings on either side of the street with machine gun, rifle or cannon fire.

News of successfully advancing into the city reached Hannah from the various pilots, and she learnt that there were no losses of any sort other than a man who'd had his hand burnt slightly by a Molotov Cocktail shattering against the firing port he had been using. Republican troops were dying, sure, but far fewer than in any other assault situation. She pursed her lips at all the good news, there should have been Nationalist air units in the area, perhaps they had all been caught on the ground? Even so, she should be expecting Nationalist air support to arrive within twenty minutes or so. The Armoured Personnel Carriers were performing better than expected for urban warfare, but that was mainly because they had infantry support. "Ma'am, we have a report from 1st Mechanized! The enemy is deploying satchel charges!" The Brigadier of 1st Light Tank reported, as he was CO of First Division.

"What did we lose?" Hannah asked "Alert all the men, the enemy are employing satchel charges, stay in the open with vehicles, and be wary of sharpshooters too. Use periscopes, don't stand up in the cupola. Molotov and Satchel Charge threat too great."

"We didn't lose anything much, one of the APCs had one of its coaxial machine guns knocked out, that's all." Each Armoured Personnel Carrier mounted two coaxial 12.5mm machine guns in addition to its 40mm Autocannon.

Hannah nodded curtly as she went back to the map she'd gotten of the city, tracing the progress of units through the city. She had only deployed Mechanized and Light Tank Brigade troops to the front, mainly because of their abundance of APCs and Light Tanks, and even then she had deployed mainly APCs. "Well that's alright then. Continue pressing forward, but instruct the men to maintain loose formations and beware of air units. The men know what to do with enemy air units, delegate the Light Tanks to anti-air and give them cover with APCs from ground targets."

"Ma'am, enemy tanks!" The second-in-command of the 1st Light Tank Brigade reported "Sighted in these map grids, they're pinning down several friendly Republican units."

"What types?" Hannah immediately demanded.

"Republicans say they're German models, Panzer Is."

"Vector…" Hannah looked at the icons she had on the map table in the truck for just a moment "2nd Platoon, 3rd Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Mechanized to this area via this arterial road directly north of their current position, they're the closest, and First Platoon can stay with the two platoons' mortar trucks to protect them. Let's see how our armour matches up…" Her officers frowned in confusion as that unit was NOT the closest, but they obeyed anyways.

Five terse minutes later, the first combat reports had filtered up the lines to Hannah "APC and LT drivers are reporting one hit kills with high explosive rounds, their guns… aren't doing more than scratching our armour, if they even hit us." It just happened to be that the arterial road in question made the shooting range a kill zone, stretching two kilometres in a straight line through the city. That was a range where the Shepard Industries vehicles easily scored clean kills, but the German-made and likely German-crewed vehicles stood no chance of getting a kill even at point-blank with 7.92mm machine guns against 60-plus millimetres of angled rolled homogeneous armour. Even the long 40mm guns of the Shepard Industries vehicles were virtually incapable of penetrating the armour, since it was slanted on all sides, the front end being so slanted that horizontally it was equal to twice its thickness (30 degrees from horizontal). Of course, this also cut down hard on the damage of friendly fire incidents, which were rare anyways.

"Enemy aircraft sighted General!" Someone shouted from outside "Headed toward the city!"

"Relay it down the chain, delegate Light Tanks to anti-aircraft duty, evasive patterns all units, find a clear area and run around. Take down those aircraft before they can take any of us down!"

The bang-bang-bang of the Autocannons firing at maximum cycling rate, 2.5 rounds per second, though it was tempered by the time needed to load a new clip, echoed through the radio as the enemy aircraft approached. One blew up in mid-air as it was caught by a 40mm high explosive round. Another lost its tail and started going down in a trail of fire even as a third broke into pieces as the air was filled with shells. The nineteen incoming aircraft did quite badly, throwing their bombs haphazardly before being blown apart, only five pitching forward into attack dives and only one dropping a bomb before coming apart in the air under machine gun and cannon fire. "Status?" Hannah asked after a moment. "Secure from air attack, continue subduing the city."

"We have a problem…"

Hannah's head whipped around at that "What is it?"

"One of our APC gunners just shot three Republicans for shooting fleeing civilians." The officer reported grimly.

"Did anyone else see?"

"No."

"Well then congratulate the man for doing what's right, but tell him to check around before shooting if at all possible next time. How's the damage from the air attack?"

"We managed to evade all the bombs, but one of our Light Tanks lost a radio antenna when the engine of a crashing aircraft hit it."

"Well then that's not a problem. Is the city secured?" After all, each LT had THREE antennae for a reason (2 spares, the turret one folded down unless both rear ones were shot off).

The brigadier nodded "Yes General, we're clearing out the last pockets of resistance. The Motorized Brigades have chased down all fleeing Nationalist soldiers and captured them as per the plan."

Hannah nodded "Good, we've scored our first victory, now… open me a channel to Second Division's command frequency. Give the men today to help settle things down in the city as well as ensure the Republicans don't do anything stupid." She finished giving orders to First Division before turning to the other radio set "Second Division, what's your status?"

"We are turning inland from the coastal highway, going through the hills right now, following the river valleys toward the Ebro River Valley, General. How are things on your end?"

"We're doing fine, head south to the Ebro river valley after that along the river south from Pamplona, we'll be waiting at the junction of the river with the Ebro for you, wait, scratch that, where the Ebro crosses the forty-second degree North, got it Second Division?"

"Forty-second North and Ebro River, confirmed General."

"Good, I will expect you there in two days, after dropping most of the Republican troops you have picked up from San Sebastian in Pamplona. We'll be cutting through the Nationalists besieging Zaragoza after we meet back up, so be ready. We'll be taking a break on the way, so you guys can sort of take your time." Hannah stated in clear audio. She knew someone else was likely listening in, hence the reason why she was saying it. "General Shepard out."

The other voice replied with "Affirmative, General, Second Division out."

Hannah turned to her command staff "Order the units of First Division to form up south of the city after pillaging all the gasoline we can and any high-quality alcohol, be it methanol or ethanol. After assembly and roll call are finished, and everyone's confirmed present, relay orders by messengers to First Division, we move out this afternoon."

"Ma'am, I thought…" Brigadier Gunter von Esling's frown disappeared, being replaced with a wide grin "Classic but not entirely expected is it?"

Hannah smirked back "Correct, this is why you were selected as a Brigadier candidate and then cemented into the job. Franco has some twenty-two thousand troops attacking the city, while our hitting force is effectively only sixteen thousand without reinforcements. There are two scenarios, either he'll try to ambush us, which will fail abysmally as we will be moving along the south bank of the river, not the North as he expects us to, or he'll entrench his men. We're not giving him the time he'll need to entrench."

At 1700 hours, roll-call and supply redistribution was complete, the men had bought up foodstuffs from the local stores and filled up their water tanks with freshly boiled water from the local taps (and then boiled to decontaminate it just in case) and were ready to roll out. Several dozen Republicans had been shot as examples to the others on what would happen to those attacking civilians when the Shepard Industries soldiers were around. The news got out real fast that though an ultra-elite, heavily armed and equipped force had just arrived to support the Republicans, no civilian attacks would be tolerated by those bearing the red Maple Leaf with Bars logo. The desperation of the Republican government meant that their aid was accepted unconditionally and the Republican forces throughout Spain were soon notified of the danger that came with the fire support.

The two Battalions that Hannah had detached to locate the airport the enemy planes had come from had come back to report the airstrip was in the south, near the next city: Logrono. That was perfect for her. Moving out under cover of darkness, in orderly columns, it was only two hours before she had, with a significant number of Republican troops still hitching a ride, surrounded Logrono on all sides with her four Brigades, having snorkelled two Light Tank Companies (minus mortar trucks) under and across the river earlier.

The howitzers started first by smashing at the airfield before her vehicles charged the city and fired at anything that dared shoot back. Republican infantrymen again followed the heavy armoured vehicles in, yelling and whooping as what little resistance the small Nationalist garrison put up became red mulch interspersed with mud and dirt in the tracks of the powerful vehicles or red smears on walls and piles of dismembered parts under machine gun, cannon and some rifle fire. The small city was cleared fairly quickly, though the Republican troops didn't do anything to the civilians (under threat that Shepard Industries would cease providing support if there were any more massacres committed by Republicans).

Astonishingly, the Republican government had agreed ALREADY that this aid force was one they couldn't live without and agreed to the terms unanimously. It was a historical event as the disparate factions actually agreed on something for once, and it would start the cascade of change that would turn the Republicans from a bunch of loosely confederated rabble cities into some semblance of a government. But that is another story, or at least a later story…

What followed was taking twenty minutes to maintain the vehicles, by using jacks to raise the vehicles to relieve the suspension systems momentarily before performing other operations. It wasn't really needed, as the suspension was locked-in by hand before the vehicles were taken out of storage or dormancy anyhow. However it was good for track maintenance, which involved rinsing the tracks with water to clean them off, often while running the tracks to shake off the water from the hoses. It was good practice, though Hannah knew her vehicles needed no such maintenance to function well. In fact, it had taken fifteen days of driving through swamps, forests, etc. in Northern Ontario for ten hours a day before the first vehicle started breaking down back during the final stages of testing. However it kept fuel economy high and reduced the demand by engines for the toning of ethanol slightly somehow, most likely because of less resistance to the engine torque making the engines less "temperamental". Of course, that was "temperamental" by Hannah's standards, which were set high… and fulfilled by her engineering.

After the short down period and more gas station raiding by the men, plus dinner time, Hannah looked up at the quickly darkening sky, it was clear, and there was going to be adequate moonlight to conduct the operation (A/N: If someone actually finds out December 15, 1936 was a night with a new moon, I apologize, but my calculations on a 29-day lunar cycle say it should be at least a half moon that night, and if you have weather records for that day and it turns out there was a blizzard instead of a clear night, sorry.). That was especially true as there was snow on the ground in the valley, probably due to distance from the sea and the reserve heat it held. _Regardless_, Hannah thought, _the reflected light will only enhance our visual capabilities, and the white snow… right_. She immediately ordered the men to buy as much white fabric as possible. Even though they were reimbursed on-site with money (she supervised the proceedings), the gatherings of frightened civilians "donating" the bed sheets and curtains that had been asked of them seemed quite worried, even after Hannah had First Division's commander give a public speech reassuring them. The cloth was wrapped around the outside of the armour and stuck on by clamps with the rings present on the armour's exterior just for this sort of occasion. _Damn Spain for being so varied in climate… inland it snows and near the sea it's still like springtime, can't even paint my vehicles camouflage white-grey and just be done with it…_

"General, what shall we do now?" Someone asked after the vehicles had all been "camouflaged" as best as they could be. Fuel reports had filtered in from the troops, and it wasn't looking that great, they had brought enough spare gasoline to fill every vehicle's tanks three times over, in theory giving her APCs and LTs a range of a little over a thousand kilometres, but now they had already ate through a fifth of a tank's equivalent of fuel. In other words, even with buying i.e. commandeering all the gas they could, they were still losing gas, however, with the amount of ground they had covered, it was not surprising gas reserves had dropped from 300% to 280% if the reports were accurate. Ammunition was a more pressing concern, from 300% ammunition to 250% in less than a day of fighting sparse battles…

"We go southeast along the river, the southern bank to be precise, and smash our way through any Nationalist resistance in the way to relieve Zaragoza." Hannah dialled the radio to First Division "Everyone buckled up and close your hatches, this is General Shepard, prepare to move out." Then she flicked to a Brigade-specific channel "First Mechanized Brigade, do you read? What's your status?"

The chatter between the brigade and its battalions ceased immediately "Reading you loud and clear General Shepard, we are fully gathered, supplied and ready to go. Where do you want us?"

"Take a nap, post watch, repair any damage that you haven't handled already, of course, and be ready to move out in… two hours." Hannah stated simply "I'll leave a unit in between for radio communications relay, but be ready to move out when I tell you to. It's a four-hour drive to Zaragoza from either side of the river, you're taking the north, I'm heading on the south shore. Understood, First Mechanized? General Shepard out."

"Understood General, First Mechanized out."

Hannah switched to the First Division Channel now "First Light Tank, First and Second Motorized, move out, we head southeast, following the river. First Light Tank spearheading, Motorized advised to move with APCs and LTs near the rear, move out soldiers!"

* * *

><p><em>Ebro River Valley, December 16, 1936<em>

The manoeuvre went in effectively total silence as the soft rumble of the engines moved through the night along the river. By 0150 on December 16, 1936 the soldiers were very glad for the Hardening Period of their training as they rolled through the night, before the column came to a halt and fanned out as the artillery trucks began to move with the soft whirrs of hydraulic systems, feeding off engine power, oriented the howitzers in position to fire on the Nationalist positions directly ahead of them in the plain west of Zaragoza. There were more in the hills north of the city, but that wouldn't matter as much as recon trucks stationed along the river (the actual armoured column had moved a short distance away from line of sight form the other bank) observed enemy troops moving out to set up an ambush.

That trap would never be sprung as the Nationalist artillery pieces bombarding the city went up in huge blasts. Their ammunition, stacked behind them for convenience, not expecting an attack, was set off by accurate fire from a good ten kilometres away. What happened next was a classic case of what would become known as blitzkrieg, heavy armoured vehicles seemingly appearing out of nowhere in the snow and blasting anything that moved into things that no longer moved i.e. body parts or scrap metal as they roared by at high speed into the enemy formation, sowing absolute chaos and mass panic as infantry fled the armoured, heavily-armed behemoths. Trucks loaded with Hannah's infantry moved forward just after the tanks had made it clear the enemy didn't have any heavy guns available.

They weren't quite correct. A German-supplied 37mm anti-tank gun opened up on an Armoured Personnel Carrier, scoring a direct hit to the flank while the vehicle was distracted with something else. The shell glanced off the 60mm slanted armour of the APC and smashed into the windshield of a Truck. The armoured glass, with wire mesh to reduce shattering from bullets, broke and sprayed the driver and passenger seat machine-gunner with large glass fragments while the shell itself buried itself in the armour plating at the back of the truck cabin and stopped. The driver was blinded by blood falling from a nasty cut to his forehead and slammed the brakes, brining the truck skidding to a halt. Thankfully, the loose formation meant no one crashed into the stopped truck as the gunner pulled a large glass shard from his flak jacket, which had absorbed the damage, and stared only for a moment. Then the man snapped out of it with training and shouted for the cabin roof gunner (who stood in the back of the truck and operated a gun on the roof that could function as AA) to take care of hostiles while he administered first aid to the driver.

"Keep your eyes shut man! God… gauze… here it is, press this to the wound, don't worry, head wounds always bleed a lot, from what I can see it was a clean slice" The guy had been looking slightly to the left when the shell had hit the center of the windshield, its power and speed much reduced by deflection and deformation off an APC.

"I know the eyes closed part, give it some pressure… wrap a bandage around it and get me some water so I can wash out my eyes… Give me my canteen." The driver mumbled as the gunner started doing just that, taking the guy's leather-and-metal hybrid helmet off to check for additional injuries before he was satisfied that that was the only major injury other than the hand the man was holding with his other, a bloodied fragment of twisted steel and glass showing that it had been stabbed. The blood flow was already lessening from that wound and the head one under pressure as the gauze and pressure worked at keeping the wound contained. The gunner wrapped the longest cloth strip from the first aid kit under the driver seat around his friend's head tightly before tying it and replacing the helmet. "Here, let me wrap that hand too."

"Alright, thanks man… I can still drive, really glad for this flak jacket…" The driver gestured down at the glass fragments littering the floor and both men chuckled morbidly as they wrapped his left hand. Then the driver, taking his canteen, opened it and leant to the right enough so that when he splashed his eyes with the water the gunner poured into his right hand the bloodied water landed on the truck floor. Once his eyes were clear, the man rubbed them a few times, then blinked some more and set the truck into motion again, headed forward. All the trucks seemed to have stopped at the same general time after realizing there were guns they couldn't handle in the Nationalist positions.

It was thirty hectic but organized minutes later, at 0230, that Hannah determined the area cleared enough to send in her trucks again for picking off any stragglers the armour may have missed. That was when she got news from First Mechanized. They had sighted an enemy column racing back toward the city and were currently shadowing them with two Battalions looping around to overtake them. Hannah's orders were "Engage from rear and flank as soon as element of surprise is lost by coming too close to the enemy, if you need to, drive them into the river, try to make sure no one escapes. Push your vehicles to their limits and get onto that high ground north of Zaragoza, then smash south on the enemy lines at three-kilometre range, engage artillery as your priority, then aircraft and anti-tank guns, then everything else." Hannah ordered simply as her own forces rolled toward Zaragoza. The local Republican garrison had heard through the line of command that help was coming… but they had neither expected thousands of vehicles nor that said help would be here so soon, and at night too… So there were a couple accidents as the Republicans who thought they were facing Nationalist units fired anyways.

Hannah had already ordered a "Hold Fire" command, so there was no return fire and the Republicans soon ceased shooting, though the fact that their weapons were futile against the seemingly-invulnerable, hulking armoured vehicles may have had something to do with it. The rear boarding hatches of the APCs were all open as they began to roll toward the city, the soldiers loudly singing the _International_ as a sort of ticket of passage into the city. The trucks followed the armoured vehicles into the city—the one truck that sustained real damage had had its windshield, at least the center block, replaced already—and through it to array themselves just behind the city perimeter, out of line of fire of the Nationalist guns on the other side.

Most of her men dozed for half an hour before Hannah got a message from First Mechanized stating that they were in position. She roused her men and instructed them "You have at most three minutes before we charge those lines." She told them, before instructing First Mechanized "Attack in one minute."

As the first explosions blossomed and echoed across the snowy terrain, Hannah watched form out of her current APC's cupola with some interest for a few moments. Then she ordered all armoured elements of all three brigades currently waiting with her, excluding brigade and battalion command echelons, to charge the enemy lines in formation, with the standard ten-meter spacing between vehicles and ranks of vehicles. Over a thousand APCs and "Light Tanks" took to the field at that command, surging toward the enemy lines in an unstoppable wall of shooting, crushing, moving steel.

The heavy artillery guns had already been towed around to orient toward the attacking force that had hit the siege-layers from the rear. Most of the artillery had been destroyed in the opening volleys, but those that remained, trying to do some damage and failing at accuracy because the range was too close, were destroyed by the new hail of shells that came from the direction of the city. Then the armour was on the Nationalists, rolling them into the dirt with thunderous guns and treads…

"Perhaps I'll call this type of war Rolling Thunder… nah, it doesn't need a special title…" Hannah murmured to herself as she tracked her units' progress from radio reports from each battalion, which she could manage comfortably thanks to not having that many to watch over for now.

By dawn, it was all over, as of 0600 hours, December 16, 1936, Hannah Shepard had linked the two separate parts of Republican Spain together with a huge tract of territory (though still Nationalist-sympathetic). She'd accomplished something that would have her in history books and books on tactics for decades even if it was her only achievement… That was nowhere close to the truth for Hannah Shepard. She had a dream, and she would achieve it.

Her troops spent the next two days making their way at economy speeds (with lots of breaks to let Second Division catch up, also at economy speeds) toward the coast. The trucks headed toward Barcelona, where an ammunition shipment had arrived for the Shepard Industries Brigades as they were called. The shipment had been transferred through France by King's contacts and crossed the border in the eastern parts, northeast of Barcelona. Hannah's armour rolled south along the coastal highway to Valencia, to embark on the main Valencia-Madrid highway. The higher economy speed of trucks relative to armoured units allowed them to catch up by the time the convoy was nearing Teruel. Having loaded up on Republican troops in Valencia, Hannah was well-poised to launch an assault on the stronghold, having resupplied her artillery units fully, to 300% ammunition supplies by "base load". She had about twelve thousand Republican Infantry and 32000 of her own men against the 17000 or so expected defenders of the city.

The battle began as usual for her on December 19, her howitzers firing from the hillsides to blast the airstrip's aircraft and hangars to dust with high explosive rounds (as opposed to armour-piercing). Then her armour, already rolled into position in the hilly terrain, struck hard with cannons belching fire and machine-guns rattling away, spearheading the friendly infantry assault as they were meant to. _Good… I have no intention of wasting my men in urban warfare._ Hannah thought as she watched the assault and the ineffectual anti-tank fire pinging off her vehicles. _Sure, the Motorized Infantry may be able to pull low-level urban work off very well but it's just not worth it._

"Enemy aircraft sighted!" She heard the warning over the radio, as did everyone else, because it was the only thing allowed on Supreme Command Channel other than Hannah.

"Light Tanks engage the air units with your cannons!" She frowned as she shouted into the radio "I think they've started flying patrol over their cities…" Hannah muttered, then smirked, it said something about her soldiers' stealth and camouflage capabilities if aircraft had failed to spot thousands of vehicles moving into positions (she had bought a lot of white cloth in the towns and cities they'd passed, to stick it up on her armoured vehicles). It didn't take long before all the aircraft were downed, and most of her vehicles didn't even need to refresh camouflage, thanks to wetting the cloth beforehand so that even the few near misses from Nationalist bombs didn't light the tarps on fire.

However, Molotov Cocktails, though not very effective against Shepard Industries vehicles, were still able to burn off the white tarps with relative ease, exposing the green and brown hull underneath. Thanks to fireproofing varnish the paint didn't burn off, but the cloth on top sure did. It made the things hideously obvious targets.

The Nationalists paid for that by having their barracks raided for white cloth after the battle was over. Even with the severely messed up new Republican-oriented government recently founded in Aragon, both governments of the Republicans fully agreed that the Shepard Industries Brigades were a mandatory force if the Republic was to have a good chance of winning. Therefore, there were no shootings of prisoners or civilians, though few prisoners were taken in the first place, most of them having been mown down before they could surrender. Hannah's forces left the newly-captured city, heading northwest through the hilly terrain, following the Tagus River Valley for a bit, at 0500 hours on December 20, 1936. They were driving through Nationalist territory, so understandably there were several "skirmishes" with Nationalist outposts and the remaining Republican troops they had with them in the convoy were dropped off to occupy the region.

That is, of course, if pointing howitzers direct-fire style at Nationalist flagged buildings and firing before the enemy knew you were there counted as a skirmish. The armoured superiority didn't help the impression that it was a steamroller as opposed to a skirmish. Hannah had split up her Divisions again to ease manoeuvring through the mountains and expand her area coverage to completely annihilate all Nationalist military forces in the area. The weather forecast was not good… there was supposed to be a snowstorm the next day, and manoeuvring armoured columns in hilly terrain in snow was risky business… Hannah told her men to go ahead anyways, they would be in Guadalajara by noon, she told them.

Actually, they were there by 1000 hours, and after giving her men time to stretch their limbs outside their vehicles, she ordered them to seal up again and move out toward Madrid. By 1200 hours, when the sun was highest in the sky, her men crested the last hill before Madrid and the column fanned out along the ridge, overlooking the city from the northeast, and stopped. She started her customary battle speech "Do you see this? The smoke? That is the smoke of countless lives and families being torn to pieces. That is the smoke of young girls and women being raped and then shot, being thrown into the pyre by their murderers. That is the smoke that obscures what was once a great and majestic city. That is the smoke the Nationalists brought, and the smoke that WE WILL SILENCE!" A great roar of agreement went up from the thirty-two thousand men, who had opened their cupolas to survey the sight. The speech of their General had stirred something in them, a righteous anger, tempered by the wisdom of said General's teachings… "First Division, we swing west today to cut off the enemy reinforcement and supply lines. Second Division, head south from here and loop around Madrid, grind your way around the Nationalists to the south, then plough toward Toledo while we head there too to meet up with you."

"Understood General, we will comply, Second Division Out."

Hannah replied with "Excellent, Happy Hunting, General Shepard out." She stood up straighter with a scowl "Let's get those bastards."

In the afternoon of December 20, 1936, the exhausted and battered defenders of Madrid witnessed a seeming miracle as hundreds, nay thousands of camouflaged armoured vehicles roared down from the high ground northeast of the city into the Nationalist lines, which crumpled like piece of wet paper. The sound of cannons firing, artillery rounds detonating, mortars pounding away and machine-guns rattling incessantly echoed across the snowy plains as the steel fist smashed into the Nationalists. They were followed by close fire support from mortar trucks and rifle support against straggling survivors by the Motorized Infantry trucks that came after. The few anti-tank guns the Nationalists had could do nothing, and the heavy artillery took either too long to tow around and were blasted by the 40mm cannons of the vehicles or had been eliminated in the initial bombardment (stupid ammunition storage policies again being the problem). It wasn't long before the Nationalists began to leave their trenches in a clear rout, and Hannah issued her next orders "Anyone not surrendering is to be shot immediately! Do not allow them to escape!" She shouted on the Supreme Command Channel. "Don't bother pursuing if they get out of range though, it could be a trap."

It took half an hour before everything was reported to be all clear, and Hannah started manoeuvring her units southward. Unfortunately a truck had been flipped over onto its side due to a trench, though the sturdy construction and tied-down supply crates meant that the men were not severely wounded (after all, no bayonets were present as Hannah's doctrine meant no bayonets fitted unless they were actually going into urban warfare on foot). That meant they had to attach a rope through the underside of the vehicle and tie it to a tank before typing the other base corner (i.e. the other ends of the wheel axles) to an APC, before tilting the truck back upright with slow motion by the APC, using the tank with brakes fully applied to anchor the thing in the muddy snow. That only took a few minutes, but dropping by Madrid to greet the defenders as allies took a whole two hours… mainly because they were employed as heavy fire support for the defenders for a bit in the suburbs the Nationalists still held. Hannah managed to persuade the Republicans into happily sending them off by telling them she was bound for Toledo. At 1300, the soldiers, singing the _International_ to appear more friendly to the citizens, rolled out of Madrid on and around the road (the armoured column was far too large to fit on the road) toward Toledo. A Light Tank that had had its rear end chewed up by a plunging artillery shell (thanks to blast venting technology being installed and a bulkhead between engine/fuel and crew compartments, it was not a catastrophic kill, nor was anyone killed, though the crew was rather shaken and banged up by parts thrown loose by the blast) stayed behind with a truck. They would be performing field repairs with spare 80mm armour plating on the parts that were unsalvageable, and awaiting shipping of another 800-horsepower engine from the nearest friendly contact region, which was France through the Barcelona-Valencia line.

One hour into the two-hour drive, Hannah started receiving reports of Second Division's success at Toledo. She had authorized Motorized Infantry Doctrine when it came to assaulting urban areas, in that her units were to use mass sniping tactics against any enemy forces sighted, as well as bombard anything worth bombarding from long range. She had also stated simply that after an hour she would arrive with infantry to take the city. She had effectively stripped most of the defenders from Guadalajara and Madrid, but it needed to be done and the men had volunteered anyways. Besides, it wasn't like there were any more major concentrations of Nationalist forces in the area anyways… so they could afford to spare the men to take back a city that had been in Nationalist hands for months. It was going to be a major morale victory if nothing else.

* * *

><p>SHEPARD INDUSTRIES VEHICLES: A-APC-1935A and A-T-1936A<p>

Weighing in at a hefty 35 tons and sporting a 40mm autocannon, this Armoured Personnel Carrier and Light Tank duo are more medium-tank-like by the standards of their day. However people still call the former an APC for its infantry compartment, which holds up to six passengers in comfort (cramming could fit in as many as 10 men if some crouched on the floor). The Light Tank is so designated by Shepard Industries, and is non-negotiable. The Armoured Personnel Carrier and Light Tank are designed to deliver heavy hitting power with infantry and, in the case of urban/amphibious combat scenarios, provide fire support and/or smuggle them in, be it through roads or underwater.

Shepard Industries is perhaps best known for constructing the first light, practical, reliable, fuel-efficient 800-horsepower aircraft engine that is not of a radial design but instead of a two-column piston design. This engine has been employed in the A-APC-1935A and A-T-1936A to provide them with unheard-of mobility. With 450mm and 500mm tracks respectively, these vehicles can navigate even the worst of swamps and snow banks where others would be bogged down (sheer engine power helps) and sustain 45km/h maximum speeds cross-country. The maximum road speed has not been fully tested, however it is known that economy speed on long, straight highways is 45 km/h.

The 6-speed gearbox (1 parking, 2 reverse, 3 forward) has the normal gears of "Parking, Low, High, Reverse, Fast Reverse" However there is one gear that has a skull and crossbones painted next to it along with a small plaque "Unless on long, straight highway, do not touch." It is to be noted that rumours had it that the absolute maximum the APC-1935 could sustain on a long, smooth road was in the neighbourhood of 65 km/h, however this has neither been confirmed nor denied. The US Army's attempts to test this resulted in the road being torn up, unfortunately. It is obvious that such speeds are only possible thanks to the modular suspension system which uses large, thick-coil springs in pods of sorts, to be removed when there is maintenance performed or the vehicle is in storage to prevent long-term stress and loss of elasticity, when time comes for reactivation, jacks are used to lift the hull off the ground (and thus separate the block portions of the suspension systems) or pull the two blocks apart before the spring modules are slotted into their alcoves and locked in.

From this point onward, the report focuses more on the APC, the Light Tank will be referenced once in a while in comparison only, as most of their properties are equal.

Auxiliary weapons of the APC consist of two coaxial A-WMG-12.5-90A machine guns (12.5mm calibre, 90 calibres barrel), each able to fire reliably at 450 rpm, using 100-round boxes of ammunition (1600 rounds base number, though typically 2400 or more are carried). These are incorporated into the main gun shield and only able to traverse a few degrees each. In other words, the turret's powered traverse needs to be used to target the machine guns, though the three traverse speeds available in each direction help greatly with targeting. The 800 hp engine also powers the turret traverse mechanism, although it is very much an auxiliary gear, just like the dynamo mounted around the main transmission shaft powering air conditioning or heaters according to needs, though mostly the power is only used to keep the multiple internal lights running.

The A-WTC-40-75A, first employed on the APC, is a highly reliable 40mm, 60-calibre barrel anti-tank weapon able to maintain power over long range, thanks to its design originally being intended for use as an anti-aircraft gun. At point-blank range it is able to penetrate up to 80mm of RHA vertically, and does not drop below 60mm penetration until ranges are above 2500 m, even at the maximum anti-ground range of 5000 m, AP rounds can still pierce some 40mm of plating at 30 degrees to the vertical. High Explosive slugs are more damaging to armour at long ranges than armour-piercing, as kinetic energy does not matter as much. However, all that a tank commander really needs to remember is that the WTC-40-75A can reliably penetrate any tank in the era of 1935 to, as estimates put it, 1941, though it will not be able to penetrate Shepard Industries vehicles without depressing the turret to fire directly into another APC's plating at as sharp an angle as possible. The 5-round clips used are in base numbers of 160 rounds per vehicle, but most carry far more in the infantry compartment, in the shelves under the seats. The gun's 150 rpm firing rate is very helpful when it comes to taking down masses of poorly armoured vehicles, or aircraft, with slugs of this size, the question is not of killing the aircraft with a hit, it's whether or not it will hit.

That being said, the armour protection of the APC-1935A is simple, uniform, but highly practical, employing 60mm plating, at 60 degrees from vertical for glacis and 45 degrees for the other sides, other than the track sections, which are vertically armoured to the same thickness as the turret: 80mm of Rolled Homogenous Armour (RHA). The turret is huge compared to contemporary vehicles, but this is mainly to accommodate ammunition, provide comfort for the commander and gunner while they operate the vehicle, and most importantly to allow for turret plating slanted at 45 degrees to increase protective capabilities. The fact that only two thicknesses are employed makes manufacturing much simpler than many other tanks and the thickness makes this the most durable armoured vehicle currently able to be mass-deployed.

On the subject of mass deployment, the APC-1935A is, like the T-1936A, very, very cheap, mainly because of efficient manufacturing processes by Shepard Industries, economy of scale, and the rugged construction of the parts. It is also the first armoured vehicle to be deployed in massed armoured warfare, though the world did not immediately recognize the value of the strategy, to stunning success. The APC does not require heavy logistical support, as it can store additional fuel canisters in the passenger compartment, The range cross-country at economy (36km/h) is 10 hours and the same is true on roads (44 km/h) for the 500-litre gas tank.

A dominant feature to those unused to it in the vehicle's internals is the large ethanol tanks, as the engine demands a 1:10 ratio of ethanol to gasoline when running through rough terrain to keep efficiency and burning stability up. As ethanol is much harder to obtain in the field than gasoline, it is given a much larger tank, or rather two larger tanks, each 400 litres. This is enough to serve 4000 litres of gasoline, 2880 kilometres worth of running at economy speed cross-country. Note that if there is no ethanol added, the aircraft engine either demands high-octane fuel or will run more expensively in fuel. This is obviously highly undesirable, ergo the big ethanol tanks. It is true that additional fuel canisters can allow the vehicle to carry 1000 to 1200 L gasoline with it, however ethanol is still critically important for increasing burning efficiency. The main reason for using ethanol as the fuel additive is that it is an antiseptic and very useful in the field, especially in surgery. As a side note, it can also be bottled and used for Molotov Cocktails, which by the way the engine screen makes these vehicles resistant to.

The vehicle is most notable for its abilities to snorkel, with a five-meter multi-segmented telescoping snorkel through the back of the turret (it functions as a plain hand-hold when not snorkelling). The height of the vehicle (2.5 metres) allows for safe snorkelling of up to seven meters of water, at a maximum underwater speed of 20 km/h (5km/h in silt). In rough conditions, snorkelling is not advised, but if absolutely necessary can be done to a depth of six meters. The infantry compartment firing ports are sealed first before any submerging can be done, and these are just about the only air vents other than the ventilation system, which is switched to internal circulation for diving. The snorkelling pump is also engaged when diving, for more information, please see the specific manual.

All in all, the APC is very similar to the Light Tank, except the Light Tank has a larger supply of rounds, two 40mm guns, and a single center-line turret machine gun. The LT has 1500 rounds base for the MG and 300 rounds for the 40mm guns, benefitting from a large turret and wide hull to store more ammunition and fuel than it really needs. Both can mount machine guns on the roof if desired, however most do not bother doing so, as typically the main machine gun(s) and cannon can elevate enough to fulfill any type of duty, and the turret is able to traverse smoothly. The main weapons are also able to traverse just slightly, so that if the turret traversing is too irritating fine-tuning is doable for first strike scenarios.

The LT's hull is considerably shorter and flatter than the APC, however the turret is somewhat taller to accommodate the extra internal mechanisms needed to elevate the guns enough. Therefore the profile is only slightly shorter, though much smaller than its less-armoured cousin. Sporting 80mm plating in the same slope pattern as the APC and 100mm plating on the turret, the "Light Tank" far out-armours anything else currently available. However, weight is kept at 35 tons like its larger cousin thanks to smaller size. There is currently development of a better anti-tank gun ongoing for the T-1936, which is expected to serve until 1940 as the main tank of the Shepard Industries forces, however there is not enough data available on this subject. Both types are outfitted with two antennae for radio communication on their tails, at corners, and a third, folded-down antennae on top of the turret as a final spare. This allows every vehicle to stay in contact with high command and to function as recon. They may be some of the best tanks in modern times in anti-armour warfare, but they can be used for anything, a "universal tank" if you will.

END OF REPORT

* * *

><p>AN: It is possible for armour and trucks, at max 45 and 60 km/h respectively, fully loaded down, with Economy speeds of 36 km/h and 45 km/h respectively, to make that sort of speed from Point A to Point B. With adequate supplies, fuel-salvaging doctrine and good gear, you can advance that fast if there's no contemporary tank or anti-tank gun that can punch through your plating. A Destroyer gun or artillery piece could do it, and we'll see that in the future, but right now she's still shocking the Nationalists too hard and too fast for them to react to her tactics with any success. Even then, it would take a direct hit to get a kill. Remember, there is no such thing as "Unfair" or "Imbalance" in war, technological superiority coupled with doctrine and tactics, plus adequate supply, equals Power Overwhelming, like Germany invading Poland. 37mm AT guns of the time are popguns against 60+mm of sloped RHA. About sloping, any good math student, even then, would have learned enough trig for someone of Hannah's inventiveness and genius to devise sloped armour plating to increase effective thickness without adding as much more weight as would have been.

As for Hannah's artillery, please note that 55 calibre barrels CAN, practically, produce 27km range. This outranges typical Destroyers of the time, which can reach MAYBE 19km. We shall see what this means when it comes to the Rape of Malaga, Massacre of the Malaga-Almeria Highway and then Operation: Tyrannic.

REVIEW!


	4. The Rape of Malaga

A/N: You are seeing just it is that in later cycles in different realities Hannah is not as gifted… spawn her without a time loop restricting her and she'll change history beyond all repair.

* * *

><p>Chapter 4: The Rape of Malaga<p>

_Madrid, December 25, 1936_

To put it simply, the Shepard Industries Brigades were bored shitless, other than inspecting the consolidated defences of Madrid, reorganized into a new, hammered-out defence line instead of the rag-tag organization so typical of Republican cities. Some of the more religious ones said a few short prayers, then continued frowning at the noisy city, celebrating the religious holiday. Most of the soldiers had been taught into the habit of secularism in that there was no time to pray when you could be checking your rifle or tank. The troops took some time practicing more firing on the move from their trucks, though they were doing it sparingly, and then only thanks to the new shipment of ammunition that had arrived being beyond what could be carried with them easily.

They had spent the last several days hunting down Nationalist forces around Toledo, and clearing out pockets of resistance in the city, which was more tenacious than others they'd quashed. However, stubbornness was no match for mortars, howitzers and tanks as the buildings they were holed up in were brought to the ground. There were several hostage situations, but those were resolved quickly by Motorized Infantry storming the buildings from the roofs using WSMs to rapidly clear rooms and such. It was then that the Shepard Industries force had suffered their first member killed in action and Hannah had to write her first letter to the homes of the fallen. After finding the hostages' corpses, Hannah withdrew her troops, dragging their captives with them as they hurled them over to the next roof before jumping over themselves, and levelled the building with howitzer fire.

Other than the couple that had fallen to their deaths from failed throws by the angry SI infantrymen, the prisoners were secured and brought before Hannah in chains by the angry squad members of the man who'd died in action. "You are guilty of murder of civilians, I can understand killing foes in battle but you murdered innocent civilians, which I do not stand for." She pronounced simply, her men had discovered her identity yesterday, and mostly accepted it, the consensus being "We would have lost men by now if it wasn't for her tactics and vehicles". "If your only crime was to kill one of my men, I would be content putting you in a prisoner of war camp, but you killed civilians…"

"They were shot in the back of the head, General!" One of the soldiers reported "All the civilians were shot in the back of the head by these cowards, and… some of the women were…" the man balled his fists around his gun in anger as he stared daggers at the captives.

Hannah held up a hand "I've heard enough, do you have your combat knives and bayonets?" She growled in a low, dangerous voice. An image of cutting the men's bits off before nailing them to a plank via a bayonet through the dick while the men bled out from the wound, their bodies nailed to the plank alongside their removed parts flashed through her mind before she dismissed it as bad PR. It wouldn't be good for the reputation of Shepard Industries.

"Yes General!" The men stated as one.

"Take these men to a central square and bayonet them in the balls." She stated icily.

"You fucking bitch!" One of the prisoners screamed while another tried to make a run for it only to be shot between the legs by Hannah and fall down screaming his head off, blood gushing out of the wound. They continued yelling and cursing as they were dragged to an open square by the grim-faced SI soldiers, Hannah following in her APC. The civilians present, originally having been on the Republican side, weren't sympathetic and threw rocks at the prisoners until Hannah held up a hand and started talking in Spanish.

"These men have been convicted of the crimes of Rape, and Murder of Civilians with Intent." Killing civilians by accident was called "collateral damage", after all, accidents could happen, so an SI soldier accused of it would get a trial, but here the proof was irrefutable, and these weren't her men anyhow. "The sentence is first a bayonet through the testicles for the rape…" The men screamed as the SI soldiers plunged their blades in, some had tried to struggle and ended up taking the blade in the abdomen instead. The grim-faced SI troopers twisted the blades sharply, then yanked them out and stuck them in the dirt ground to clean the blood off. There were horrified gasps from the audience at first, but then the roars of satisfaction from the angry women among the crowd drowned the gasps out "…And execution, to be carried out by me, for rape and murder." Hannah finished and personally shot each of the men in the head. Then she started talking to her troops, ignoring the chattering crowd around them, which soon quieted as she spoke. "Men, I know you hated those beasts, and wanted to kill them, but though you have killed in battle or to save the innocent before, you haven't had to learn to execute people without mercy after the fact. I believe you should only need to learn that after you have more battles under your belt. For now, it is your General's burden to bear."

It was not too surprising that the present she was sent from Toledo turned out to be a large banner that read "Best General Ever" in messily painted English. Hannah could say that it wasn't a surprise in hindsight, however at the time she had laughed her head off, before resuming teaching the Madrid Command Staff about basic defensive doctrine. She didn't get any other presents, but life was still going fairly well, other than the experience of sending off the first letter to the family of a fallen soldier.

Hannah had only recruited single young men for her army, simply because they were the ones most likely to cause trouble when unemployed, so it was doubly painful as she wrote to the man's parents about how he fought bravely and died killing murderers and rapists like a good man would. She wrote of how the man had been an excellent soldier and had done well in previous battles, though she had to interview two of the man's squad to get information. She finished with "I deeply regret not simply ordering the building your son died fighting in levelled out of concern for the hostages, who had all been raped and/or killed without my knowledge, and so I swear that the next time there is an urban battle, I will acquire more intelligence before committing my men to action. Sincerely, General Hannah Shepard."

The post-script was "By reading this letter you have been sworn to secrecy as to my (General Hannah Shepard's) gender until such date that I hold a press release about it, you are hereby bound under Article 1 of the Private Military Company Act, passed by Parliament on August 20, 1936. I regret the inconvenience, but despite my taking six cities and more towns and countryside successfully from the enemy within a week of arriving in Spain, people at home will not have confidence in a woman until I win the war for them." Needless to say, that family did not state their opinions until after the press release, after the Spanish Civil War, but that is beside the point and probably at least partly because Article 1 stated that there would be a court-martial for revelation of military secrets if the PMC was subsidised like Shepard Industries was.

Hannah hated writing letters to the families of dead soldiers, she had hated the idea of it and now she hated it. Still, at least she could comfort herself with the idea that she was establishing a very good trade rate, one soldier for multiple cities… Still, she wasn't going to be recruiting any more troops until at least March of next year since starting training in the hardest days of winter was just too absurd. _Hey, it's not just men that are unemployed, single young women are getting all active too these days, maybe… No, it would be rude to do matchmaking like that… Actually, it might be a good way to keep things in order and the men free of whores and such without forcing them to camp in the middle of the wilderness. Having reasonable-looking young women around to impress always makes men tidy up their act, and besides, the women will have a hard time finding men who are better-disciplined and drilled in how to treat women with respect yet not as objects._ Hannah had just realized what group she was recruiting next, young women who were not too ugly. They didn't need to be movie stars or have a 36-25-37 perfect hourglass figure (slight emphasis on ass) or full, bouncy, and visually obstructive (standing up straight made her feet hard to see) breasts like Hannah did. What mattered was that they be average and higher in appearance, and be willing to work for equal wages to men, which most women would jump at. Of course, the nature of the job would need to be a secret until the recruits actually entered the camps, with only government forms assuring their contract wasn't too damaging to their reputations (like being whores would). Exams would need to be stricter since unlike males, which were biologically designed to fight, a large proportion of women were unsuited to combat duty. Hannah figured she would get half the number of women as she had men, sixteen thousand. It seemed like a reasonable number… provided she give enough successes for King to agree to subsidize that project too.

"General! We have new intelligence reports from the Republicans. Three days ago an army of thousands of Italian volunteers landed in Cadiz. They seem to be on the march toward Malaga." The brigadier of 2nd Motorized called as he entered the APC that had been commandeered by Hannah as a mobile command center.

The woman looked up from her logistics paperwork and frowned, looking at a map of Spain in general with red string denoting the border between Republican and Nationalist zones "Malaga is… here." She pointed at a coastal city that was effectively on a salient of Republican-controlled turf "Damn, that's not good." She picked up her radio microphone and dialled it to the First Division command frequency "First Division is to prepare for departure IMMEDIATELY, we leave in an hour, alert all the men. Anyone who is not there at the end of the hour will have pay docked." Hannah had made it clear to her soldiers during training that that was usually meant as a code phrase for "It's really damned important so you'd better be on time" and that she usually would not dock pay, but if they pushed her, well… After receiving confirmation from First Division's Brigade and Battalion commanders, Hannah turned off transmission "How bad is it? I'm guessing three columns converging on the city, one each from Seville and Granada as well?"

"Yes General…" the man sighed "I really shouldn't be surprised that you seem to have everything the enemy could do figured out beforehand…"

Hannah knew that this was an occasion to talk informally "How are the troops really reacting to the fact that I'm a woman? This is informal and off the record, by the way."

The man relaxed a bit and shrugged "Originally there were a few grumbles, then the officers started citing statistics from the Great War at the whiners and they shut up in short order after they realized how many men this much land would have cost if it wasn't for your genius tactics and heavy armour."

"Well good, that was the impression I was getting too, now go back to your Brigade, Brigadier, and help organize them." The man saluted sloppily and left as Hannah finished off her logistics papers and radioed Second Division "Second Division is to stay in the area of Madrid and assist where able while First Division is away, do you copy?"

"We copy, will comply, General, Second Division out."

"Excellent, General Shepard out." Hannah cursed internally the late information for just a moment, if it had come earlier she could have taken her troops south fast enough that the Nationalists would still likely be organizing the newly landed troops when the first of her armoured columns rammed down Cadiz's perimeter to blast their way into the city, even travelling at economy speed for her Tanks and APCs, the distance, straight-line, was 500 km or so, so it would be 700 km or so of driving, which meant two full tanks of fuel, leaving her troops only with one full tank's worth in their armour when they reached the city in a surprise attack. With pillaged fuel supplies from towns and cities along the way, they'd likely have enough to finish up the Nationalist troops around and make their way back to Toledo.

Then her mind shifted to more important matters, such as ammunition consumption being lower (more efficient) than she had expected in the Madrid region battles.

Many, MANY more Republican troops had gathered in Madrid, so if she crammed them on for ferrying she could take a good 15000 or thereabouts with her on her way south, it would be enough to snatch Cordoba and the territories between Toledo and it from Nationalist hands, especially… "Third Motorized, do you copy?" Hannah talked on the radio again, this time on the Supreme Command channel.

"We copy, General, what would you ask of us?"

"Detach all your troop/supply trucks, NOT the mortar or artillery ones, and attach them to First Motorized for this mission I'm about to embark on, you won't need them around if you're staying in one place, and APCs are better at making supply runs under fire anyhow." Hannah added, sensing a question coming.

"Agreed General, we will comply, Third Motorized Out."

"Thank you, General Shepard Out. Fourth Motorized, do the same with Second Motorized, we need all the troop transport capacity we can get. Senior staff of the First and Second Motorized Brigades, start gathering up Republican infantry that we can take with us and make sure they know our rules, no murder, no rape, or they will be shot, and maybe bayoneted beforehand. The trucks can stay behind to load up the troops for another two hours to get everything organized, so Motorized Brigades, stay here for two hours after the heavier armour leaves." There was a series of affirmatives from her Brigadiers. It would take six hours for her tanks and APCs to make the 200-or-so kilometre trip from Madrid to the first city, Val-something… That would be sixty percent fuel supply at economy speed, but each vehicle carried three times its tank capacity, with two of the equivalents in the form of spare containers in the crew compartment anyways. If the crew compartment was penetrated, the tank/APC would be a loss regardless, since she didn't have a lot of men relative to tanks and APCs and thus crews were actually more important than the vehicles.

It took Hannah a whole four days to plough her way down to Granada, making a detour to Cordoba and capturing the city in the process. She lost her first vehicle crew in the battle, an APC that took an artillery shell straight down on the top of the turret, though fortunately the infantry who'd been inside had disembarked. The vehicle was a total loss, other than the successfully salvaged armour plates, engine, fuel, and the driver, who despite his compartment being separate from the main ones by an armoured bulkhead had his arm mauled so badly he had to have it amputated. Needless to say, the man was sent on the next couple supply trucks making a run to Barcelona, the drop-off for supplies coming in through France and mail heading back to Canada via France, and he was put on a generous pension plan and given a medal.

After crossing the Guadalquivir River via the city's many bridges (few bridges outside cities were strong enough to allow her armour to pass even one at a time) and with far fewer Republican soldiers, despite her trucks making a pick-up run to Toledo, Hannah hacked her way east and then south through heavy resistance, expending over 10000 40mm shells per day over the next two days as they chewed through the Nationalist military forces in the region mercilessly, barrelling south from Granada to see what could be done only to crest the last hill before the coastal highway and collectively stop, exit their vehicles, and gape at the sight. They still blended in, as they had removed their white tarps in the march south, so they could take a moment to watch as most of the warships anchored off-shore shelled the winding column of slow vehicles and people on the road. Nationalist aircraft flew in from the northwest, probably form some airfield Hannah had missed, and strafed the fleeing civilians mercilessly. Bombs and shells were going off on the road every few moments as the SI Brigades' First Division watched.

Hannah fished out her binoculars… "The ships not firing but not intervening are Royal Navy vessels… The firing ones are either Nationalist or…" she lowered the binoculars slowly "Germans…" she hissed before turning to her staff "bring me my experimental radar." The soldiers brought out the parts from one of the General's APCs, there were three, one for command, two for the parts of the radar set. She plugged it in to the two APCs after it was assembled on the spot, while bombs and shells kept going off among the civilians, the SI soldiers twitching slightly every time the sound of an explosion reached them. Then she activated it after pointing the camo-painted dish away toward the ships visible in the distance as silhouettes. "Range is twelve kilometres, easy for our howitzers, for the main line of enemy ships, assigned Bogey One through Five from west to east. The Royal Navy ships, Bogey Six and Bogey Seven are at thirteen and fourteen respectively, the bearing and specific ranges on the five lined-up targets are…" She rattled off a series of numbers "Gunners, calculate your trajectories, and yes, the Royal Navy ships are fair game, if you don't stop a mass murderer when you could do so you are an accomplice. Besides, we can't see clearly what their flags are, they need to be punished." Five minutes later, they were done calculations.

"What about political implications?" First Light Tank's Brigadier asked.

"Well Britain and France are already not interfering supposedly, so return fire from artillery on the coast just happened to hit them. They might as well be murdering those civilians themselves, and we all know how Shepard Industries deals with civilian murders. Guns from First Light Tank's batteries, prepare to fire on Bogey One, yes, the German destroyer, First Mechanized, prepare for Bogey Two, yes, the second German destroyer. First Motorized, battalion guns, Bogey Three, that's a lighter ship, less rounds to sink, Second Motorized, battalion guns, Bogey Four. HQ guns for Motorized divisions prepare for Bogey Five, the smallest ship. All guns, on my mark, fire five volleys of armour-piercing shells." The ships were at anchor, so it was all good. "All batteries… MARK!"

A thunderous volley rang out from the top of the ridge as the 100mm shells arced into the sky before smashing down into their targets, rocking the ships violently as the shells punched into their decks, smashed through, and detonated in the bowels of the ships. The accuracy of the guns was better with the third volley, fired after minute corrections were made based on the first volley's results. Bogey Five sank almost immediately after the second volley hit it, and so the guns did not fire the fourth volley of six shells. Instead, on Hannah's orders, they turned to the first Destroyer in line, as the second was listing dangerously and rolled over only to have more holes blown in its hull as it sank. The two Nationalist frigates, Bogies Three and Four, went down after the fourth volley, though the last destroyer, Bogey One, was struggling, ablaze already, until the detonation of its forward magazine snapped the ship in half and it went down unceremoniously. The people on the highway had stopped to watch the spectacle with mute shock before starting to cheer as the last hull vanished beneath the waves. The ships had not even had time to weigh anchor before being sent to the bottom of the sea five kilometres from shore…

The 40mm guns of the vehicles had opened up on the aircraft when the howitzers first roared. The long-barrelled guns were elevating a full 75 degrees up for the APCs and a whole 85 degrees for the Light Tanks, and sent most of them down in the opening volley of accurate, long-ranged anti-aircraft fire. The vehicles could only manage such accuracy against aircraft with massed fire and stationary guns, since when firing on the move, despite stabilizers for the guns, they still lost accuracy at anti-air ranges above about four kilometres.

"All howitzers from First Light Tank and First Motorized, acquire targeting solution on Bogey Six, Range thirteen thousand two hundred meters, stationary, bearing one-eight- zero from our current position, repeat one-eight-zero bearing, thirteen thousand two hundred meters. All howitzers First Mechanized and Second Motorized acquire targeting solutions on Bogey Seven, range thirteen thousand nine hundred meters, beginning to move east at three knots, bearing one-seven-seven." That meant three degrees east of due south "Repeat, bearing one-seven-seven, range thirteen thousand nine hundred meters, beginning to move east at three knots." The two were Royal Navy destroyers, which could be neutralized by plunging fire from her guns, as a much-needed lesson why not to condone the mass murder of civilians. Her LT and Mechanized Brigades were outfitted with fifteen howitzers each, whereas Motorized Brigades only came with twelve. "Fire, and keep firing until they sink, on my mark…"

Because Hannah had parked her artillery on the reverse slope of the ridge, the Royal Navy ships, now firing on the shore as a couple shells had come too close for comfort, couldn't see her and so concluded the artillery was on the highway. They were now shelling the river of fleeing Malaga citizens. Perhaps she should bring towed artillery instead of just truck-bed-mounted stuff to increase hitting power… battalion and brigade command levels certainly had the manpower to man the guns, but that would increase deployment time, then again the gunners needed time to calculate targeting solutions anyhow. Stationary pieces would also increase the time needed for a force to up and leave… whereas the trucks could just disengage the stabilizing braces and be gone within seconds. "MARK!" She bellowed after seeing the Royal Navy fire into the crowds, she had been debating the political wisdom of the act, but no longer, if you fired on civilians for no reason, you were a rabid animal that needed to be put down.

Fifty-four 100mm howitzers belched fire simultaneously at where the unsuspecting Royal Navy ships would be fourteen seconds later. The first volley scored direct hits as the gunners kept traversing their guns to fire again, while reloading. The second volley was another series of direct hits. The Royal Navy ships got off three volleys before Bogey Six took a volley of fire to the forward magazine and torpedo racks and snapped into three pieces with the two huge explosions. Bogey Seven followed it to the bottom soon thereafter when all artillery pieces were raining down fire on it despite its attempts to evade the well-practiced and furious gunners.

Hannah went on the First Division Command Channel as all fell silent on the ridge, the sea and air cleared of hostiles "Put this in the reports men, in your diaries. Today, you stopped seven unidentified warships from shelling unarmed, fleeing civilians, and shot down…" She looked at the tally "twenty-three aircraft that were strafing and bombing those same civilians. Today, we saved countless men, women and children from horrible deaths by putting to justice those who would sit by and watch murderers and do nothing, and who participated in the killing themselves. Be proud of what you have done today, and remember, we could not tell what nationalities the ships were, only that they were bombarding what we saw to be unarmed, fleeing civilians, you know the routine."

There was a chorus of affirmatives that echoed up through the ranks, a consensus that it was deserved punishment, before Hannah ordered them to move west toward Malaga itself. She decided on taking a route almost along the ridge itself on fairly even terrain so as to not get stuck in the mudslide (too slow to be a river) of fleeing people. Recon trucks up ahead reported that fighting for Malaga was very intense, if the rifle and machine-gun fire was anything to go by. Hannah started pushing her vehicles to maximum speeds for the armour and their economy speed (45km/h) for the trucks to match. Ten minutes later, still two hours from Malaga, the trucks' report abruptly changed. It wasn't a battle… it was mass executions that made the noises.

That was when Hannah started getting angry. "Where the hell is the main Nationalist army camped?"

"They're in the city, and… chasing women through the streets, grabbing them and dragging them places… permission to engage General?" 1st Platoon, 1st Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Motorized had been sent for the recon duty…

"…Negative, repeat, NEGATIVE, DO NOT ENGAGE! Locate enemy artillery positions first, wait, scratch that, what can you see right now?" Hannah asked tersely, her teeth grinding together as the APC rumbled and bumped every few moments, making her very glad for her paper clamps. They fed her data and she started giving it to her artillery trucks immediately, they were already plotting out the targets on their maps while they tracked their own progress by landmarks nearby on the topographical maps they had purchased of the area.

News came through the radio, and it was pretty nasty news "We have an offensive by the Nationalists between Madrid and Toledo, at least, that's what we're getting through the line from Granada." They'd left a truck there to act as a radio relay, and it was that truck that was broadcasting to them right now through a couple other relays. "About 40,000 men, with German anti-tank guns, heavy machine guns, tanks and planes, they have the Condor Legion supporting them. What should we do?"

Hannah frowned deeply "Condor Legion… that's German Army basically… tell the men there to give no quarter, no mercy, kill them, every single one of them that comes within range, they likely have superior gear and tactics than their peers, use encirclement tactics, General Shepard out."

The other end replied with "Copy, General, will transmit immediately, Relay station out."

Hannah knew that her doctrine would work the way it was meant to even if the telegram wire had been cut, and that her troops would crush their foes anyways, though not necessarily as overwhelmingly and smashingly as with the extra orders "Alright, as soon as we are at ten-kilometre range of Malaga, open fire on the Nationalist barracks with howitzers, 1st Battalion, Second Motorized are to stay with the trucks and defend them while the rest of us go in to crush the scum of the city. We'll move closer to the highway now, for flat ground, Trucks, go to maximum cross-country speed as soon as we're on flatter ground, armour, go to the gear that has the skull and crossbones when you see the trucks accelerating, but do try to keep your speed the same as the trucks…"

* * *

><p><em>Somewhere between Toledo and Madrid, December 29, 1936<em>

In the meantime, Brigadier Gunter von Esling, traded over from 1st Light Tank to command 2nd Division, was laying a large ambush for his countrymen. Regardless of their nationality, his General had drilled into him the concept that evildoers who behave like diseased animals had to be put down, and, to be polite, the Condor Legion had a HORRIBLE track record when it came to war crimes.

Well, he agreed completely with his General's order on this one, he was not about to be polite about informing them of their crimes. Esling had 2nd and 3rd Mechanized waiting on his wings to clamp together and crush the enemy column, with the Motorized elements of his position camouflaged with snow walls, waiting for their foes to appear. Both he and his General thought alike, perhaps it was why she put him in the job at the old age of twenty-eight… he would not disappoint.

Yes, like almost every officer in the Shepard Industries Brigades, he had fallen to the trap the General had set. At the final officers' private graduation ceremony she'd blown them all over with a feather with choice of attire, and so, the 36-year-old who still looked eighteen had effectively all the command staff under her crushing on her (they were all single men, so they could ogle). Esling wasn't the best about dealing with the attraction, but he was far from the worst.

Hannah knew all of this, and she ensured none of her men actually said anything about it via subliminal intimidation. Affection wasn't bad if it didn't get in the way of efficiency. Hell, it made it more certain that her men would listen to her.

Esling's Motorized elements sighted the German armoured columns advancing in haphazard formation at 1100 across the fields of snow. The drone of aircraft soon reached the ears of the quiet observers as the German tanks advanced in loose formation… not bad… except their armour was like the cream on a cake to the 40mm gunfire that lashed out at them. Esling had ordered his troops to fire when the Germans had crossed the invisible line in the snow that marked a distance of five hundred meters. In keeping with the "No mercy" policy, they had the line stretched out enough that the parabola of vehicles encompassed the entire length and breadth of the Nationalist and German formation. The aircraft were brought down within seconds by the Light Tanks filling the skies with High Explosive shells from their camouflaged positions. The APCs engaged the German tanks at effectively point-blank range. A Panzer I had armour thin enough that the 12.5 millimetre heavy machine guns the Shepard Industries vehicles used, with armour-piercing rounds, could punch through. Even the newer German vehicles, Panzer IIs, of which only a few were present, had 20mm guns, which, at zero range, i.e. with their barrels pressed up against the hulls of the APCs, would have failed at penetrating. 14mm of steel armour meant that against even high explosive 40mm slugs they were still about as protective as a wet paper hat and functioned merely as big targets.

At least the German tactics weren't as bad as most, though they were still clumsy and disorganized, not nearly as refined and practiced as Shepard Industries units. After all, their commander had not had years' worth of practice pushing around pieces on map boards against a commander of similar genius (i.e. Hannah vs. Jane). The inferior gear made the match-up deadly at best for the Germans as their air support was eviscerated and missed antiaircraft shells rained down on the infantry assembled behind and supporting the tanks. More than a couple trucks slewed to a halt as their engines, transmissions or drivers were eliminated by falling high explosive 40mm shells. The Germans started firing back and trying to evade as soon as they could target the muzzle flashes of the long 40mm guns. Sadly for the Germans, although they had rate of fire, even the 20mm popguns on the Panzer IIs simply were not adequate to do more than rip the wet tarps that acted as removable winter camouflage for the Shepard Industries vehicles and ping off the armour.

Though the 150 shells per minute cycling rate of the 40mm guns was just over half the Panzer IIs' guns' 280 rpm rate, the fact remained that a) each Light Tank had 2 guns, each APC 1, b) there were a hell of a lot more armoured vehicles on the SI side, c) the armour plating on the SI side was between four to six times as thick not factoring in sloping, and d) the 40mm's punched much, MUCH harder. Therefore, it was unsurprising that the Condor Legion-spearheaded push into Republican territory rapidly devolved into a rout. However, the paths of retreat had already been cut off by additional armoured units.

The end result was over a thousand APCs and hundreds of LTs pounding the advancing Nationalist army into dust with their cannons and machine guns. That was before the trucks advanced for sharpshooters inside to pick off the stragglers who weren't worth using machine gun ammunition on. In the process of ensuring every single member of the Condor Legion involved was killed, Esling had also cut down all the Nationalist troops who seemed to have panicked at the sight of his armour. It was not entirely unexpected, as their tanks had been reduced to scrap metal in mere moments after being caught in the huge crossfire. In less than an hour it was all over, Any Condor Legion survivors had been terminated with extreme prejudice while Nationalists had merely been captured. The APCs and tanks rolled over the snowy battlefield several times to look for stragglers, but found nothing. Only one SI vehicle was lost: a truck that had become the unfortunate victim of a crashing aircraft that cooked off the fuel and ammunition supplies inside. Fortunately, the men had seen the thing coming and piled out fast enough that they were only wounded by the blast and not killed. The vanguard of the enemy assault had been eradicated. What came next would be a sweeping, encircling counterattack against the massive Nationalist infantry formations…

* * *

><p><em>Approaching Malaga, December 29, 1936<em>

"I think I just figured out why I put that skull and crossbones symbol…" Hannah growled as her APC flew up again after hitting another bump in the terrain, jouncing the crew around "This is almost as nasty as those American tanks I tested personally once."

"We're all very glad that you designed the vehicles to be so friendly to users." Esling's assistant, now acting commander of First Light Tank, replied tiredly, shuddering as more nausea washed over him when the APC lurched to one side, then rolled back to the other and shook back and forth before calming down again. The suspension system was amazing, yes, but over terrain the "suicide gear" as it was now nicknamed by the men was still enough to make the ride quite bouncy. Every single soldier had, according to reports, been grateful that their suspension as so good they could run at 60 km/h or about 37 mph and not flip over. The trucks were having an easier time, their heavy guns tucked down where applicable and their very wide chassis with a good amount of weight allowing them to keep going. Of course the smaller obstacles mostly having been crunched up by large numbers of armoured, tracked units passing over them helped. The splashing dust and mud was not much of a problem as the tanks had filters on their air intakes to keep the dust out, and the periscopes had polished armoured glass that would let mud just slide off anyways when it splattered on.

As soon as they came within 10km range of Malaga from the hills Hannah ordered her artillery pieces to leave the column and set up shop along with their escorts. Then she led everything else in a thunderous charge down the slopes north and northeast of the city. The ground shook as howitzer shells rained down on Nationalist barracks buildings and the airstrip they'd crudely constructed, and the rumbling vibrations of thousands of heavy tracked vehicles approaching was felt by the Nationalists, who were still busy rounding up civilians to be shot. The heads of the soldiers and the civilians they were going to execute turned in alarm toward the source of the noise, of the clanking and churning of powerful treads and the humming of thousands of engines. They all gaped nearly as one as the bulky armoured vehicles forced their way into the city, Motorized infantry supporting them with sharpshooter fire from their trucks' firing ports. With the amount of time the men had spent training with truck/APC-based Motorized/ Mechanized Infantry warfare, they were crack shots up to about 100 meters from a vehicle with their Battle Rifles and were almost more used to vehicle warfare than infantry combat. The soldiers rounding up the civilians were shot one by one through the head in rapid succession, their blood splattering the surrounding civilians who screamed and panicked, fleeing into houses along the streets as the armour barrelled by, the soldiers in the trucks using their roof plates to defend against Molotovs and deflect grenades away from their trucks while shooting anything that fired on them.

As the vehicles reached more densely packed parts of the city the Motorized Infantry got the collective order of "Motorized Infantry Ground Crews disembark, use standard urban warfare tactics, for rapists, you are permitted to put a bayonet through their dick, their balls, or some combination thereof, and rip it off before you execute them. Surrenders are NTO to be accepted if they were shooting or raping people just before trying to surrender, otherwise, you know what to do, fight fire with fire but don't burn yourselves". Fuming silently at the mountains of civilian corpses, some already bloating in decay, in the streets, the angry soldiers heeded the order, fixed bayonets, and headed on into the buildings of the city, going house-to-house with the practice that training in urban combat and superior doctrine gave them.

Thanks to the confusion of the city and the mass executions, the Nationalists didn't realize there was an incoming attack until it was far too late, instead thinking the rumbling was their own vehicles (suspension and engine noise insulation meant the SI vehicles weren't annoyingly obvious) moving around. They also thought the gunfire and grenade blasts were more civilians getting executed… until they themselves were shot by SI Motorized Infantry jumping from roof to roof.

Anyone who attacked the SI men was shot (after a moment of identification if possible), and so was anyone who wore Nationalist markings and who didn't surrender immediately (not that many had the chance…). More than a few Nationalists heard doors bang open behind them, saw the eyes of the woman pinned under them widen in alarm, before being thrown bodily into a corner of the room and having guns aimed at him. The soldiers would ask in halting, accented Spanish (the lines had been taught to the troops during their stay in Toledo by Republicans Hannah had asked to help her men with a few lines of Spanish) if the woman was being taken against her will, with an affirmation that they were not on the Nationalist side.

If the woman said yes, the rapist immediately found himself being bayoneted through the dick while two other angry SI soldiers of the Ground Crew of each squad held guns to the rapist, holding the man down at the same time, gagging him. While he writhed helplessly, the first soldier (usually the Squad Commander) would twist his bayonet and pull it out in cold, business-like fashion before stabbing it in lower, through the rapist's testicles, then tearing them off, and, with the organs or pieces thereof still stuck to the bayonet, stick the blade through the man's forehead. Then, with a sharp pull, the bayonet would be removed from the corpse, the soldiers would sloppily salute the rape victim and read off the note they carried with them that said in Spanish "He can't hurt you anymore, don't do anything stupid, life is too valuable to waste just because you were attacked by an animal like him." Then the bayonet would be wiped off on the dead man's clothes and the Shepard Industries men would be on their way, clearing the next building… and the next, and the next.

There was not a single case of a woman saying no to the question.

Only fifteen Shepard Industries soldiers died in the retaking of Malaga, thanks to ample application of grenades and automatic gunfire by the SI troops, and use of meat shields against enemy grenades (throwing dead Nationalists on top of the things). Still, it was the largest casualty count so far, but, a day after they had taken the city, walking among her men as they rested in the streets and their vehicles, Hannah only heard things along these lines: "He might have died… but it was worth dying to stop… this." One man was saying to his friends as Hannah listened discreetly, before an arm gestured vaguely at a pile of dead civilians behind the truck. An artillery crew whose truck she passed was talking quietly "Personally, I know those dazed rape victims we were assigned to helping out yesterday" that had been after they'd taken the city, before most of the women could think of suicide, it took a lot of persuading by the men to convince them that dying because of the animals that had wanted to kill them was dishonourable compared to getting back up and continuing the fight "were quite attractive but seriously… the way we were instructed to deal with those beasts was far too kind." Someone mumbled.

"I don't think getting stabbed through the dick while it was still hard, then getting stabbed through the balls and having them torn right off, is kind, but I think the boys on the ground killed them too soon afterward, they should have tied them out in public to die of blood loss." Someone else commented.

"Careful, man, the Code of Conduct says that despite delivering punishment to those animals, we can't become like them, we didn't do it for kicks, we did it because they needed to be punished for what they did to those poor women."

"You're right brother… I guess you're right…" the first two muttered with quiet agreements from the rest of the artillery truck crew, including the MP (multi-purpose) troops, in this case fulfilling the role of riflemen, aboard who were still on alert.

Hannah returned to her APC after that, it seemed the speech she'd given after the reclamation of the city hadn't been forgotten after all. Even though some of the dead civilians hadn't been dealt with via burial yet, it wouldn't be long before the city would be corpse-free again. She smirked to herself as she remembered the half-joking, half-serious warning about necrophilia she'd given the men, then went back to logistics papers, and—her face grew grim at this—letters to families.

* * *

><p><em>Malaga, Morning of December 31, 1936<em>

Hannah had launched an assault west from the city with First Mechanized and managed to rack up ten thousand plus kills of a Nationalist army that had been massing in the area. It was originally a second wave for Malaga, then as a force to head east to Almeria, after that a force to retake Malaga, and finally it became live target practice for the truck-based riflemen and armoured forces' gunners. However, she'd mostly stayed in the city and re-supplied her men, in addition to neutralizing several German patrol boats and a Destroyer that tried to shell the city. She used the tactic of waiting until they were firmly in range, then opening fire with every howitzer she had if it was a destroyer. It usually only took one volley of some (not all) of her guns to sink anything short of a destroyer, and one patrol boat was even sunk at 4000m range by a volley of well-aimed 40mm shell fire, she had been experimenting that day. It had also been a good exercise for tracking high-speed, long-range targets for the Light Tank drivers, as the aircraft they regularly had to fight were under that category.

She'd gotten reports form Esling about multiple total victories at the front lines west of Madrid and Toledo, but she'd also gotten bad news. The League of Nations Non-Intervention Committee had banned foreign national and stateless "volunteers" from assisting Spain, and the ban was going into effect as of today. She was of half a mind to drive to Geneva in two days, buying gas en route, and bombard the League of Nations buildings to rubble before shoving those politicians in front of her tanks' barrels and using them to make meat sauce. Then again, her army wasn't a volunteer one, they were getting paid, after all, and it was subsidised by the Canadian government. She'd persuaded King to grow some backbone since "Otherwise, people are going to start treading all over Canada, we need to show that even though we're not a superpower, we are still a power and can still conduct our own affairs. After all, why get the power to do diplomacy independent of Britain if we don't use it? The Allies will thank us later when Hitler starts another World War." She had managed to persuade King that Hitler was more dangerous than he appeared, though it took some work.

Still, she was in a foul mood today, so… "Order the men to get ready, we move out at 0700 hours." She barked, it would give them an hour to get ready. It was too bad that they had to sleep seven and a half hours a day to maintain full efficiency. Her parents never needed more than about six, Jane took about four hours of sleep while Hannah only needed three to be well-rested. "Gather up some Republican infantry units, I can't afford losing too many more men." The last supply convoys had brought thousands of Republican troops with them. "By the chime of New Years' and my thirty-seventh birthday, another major city shall be ours."

"Thirty-seven? I thought you were nineteen or so…" One of her officers asked, gesturing at her massive bust with his eyes.

"Well my family has always had a hard time aging after we mature… and just because a woman has huge, sag-free breasts, and talks about them so casually, doesn't mean she has to be that young."

* * *

><p>AN: As seen here, SI vehicles are still killable, but it takes a direct artillery shell most of the time.

Don't worry, Spanish War will be wrapping up before Chapter Eight or so (I need to somehow give enough time for the female soldiers to arrive and prove themselves on the field… which will be July 1937 or so) and we'll soon be in WWII.

REVIEW!


	5. The Barber of Seville

A/N: Sorry that it reads like a historical archive, but a) it kind of is, b) the main casts of the "talkers" aren't around (born) yet, and c) the real banter and chatter between higher-echelon commanders is typically peacetime only, and even the common soldiers talk very little during combat. Also, the easy wins aren't purely due to technology and experience in this fic, it's from a combination of a tech edge, smart doctrine, good training and TACTICS. To those who don't like steamrolling, please note that HISTORY ISN'T FAIR! A side with superiority in everything _except numbers_ will always defeat an _"equal"_ force it engages, and only in pitched battles with overwhelming numerical inferiority can it sustain heavy casualties (think a Loyalist vs. about 30 Mech Marines). There are times when they will get hammered, but their armour thickness is impervious to anything before 1941 historically at engagement ranges, so yeah.

To eliminate confusion about timeline, please refer to my profile. This particular story will go until the end of THIS version of WWII but later sequels will take it right up to just after the end of the Fourth Tiberium War.

* * *

><p>Chapter 5: The Barber of Seville<p>

_Malaga, Morning of December 31, 1936_

"Reports of a Nationalist army marching toward Cordoba, the defenders are hunkering down and entrenching." Hannah read off a telegram and chewed on her bottom lip for a second "Alright, let's go save them."

"We're going back north?" The officer who'd commented on her age before asked.

"Nope, we're going northwest, taking land and towns as we go, the new army we've gotten of Republicans will secure the turf, then we're heading southwest to Cadiz, into the lowlands." Hannah stated cheerily. "Losing their number one port will severely hurt the Nationalists, and if Portugal decides to try anything directly, well, we were firing on Nationalist positions, it wasn't our fault we had our coordinates wrong and the rounds all landed on the Portugal Army." By taking Cadiz, that would probably make Cordoba lose priority and make the army start scrambling back… straight into an ambush in Seville.

The fact that she had yet to conquer Seville did not faze Hannah whatsoever as her troops organized themselves and loaded up on Republican infantry. Dozens piled into each truck and many hitched rides on the tanks, though it was more difficult as there were no handholds or very level flat surfaces. Even the white tarps and linens were gone, unavailable for clinging on to. It was thanks to their coastal location meaning it was too warm for snow. The cloths were neatly folded and shoved into one of the vehicle's storage compartments for each vehicle, leaving green and brown camouflage paint.

By 0700, the column was ready to roll out and the men were checking their gear as the armoured column rolled out of Malaga, following the river into the mountains to the northeast. They crossed the pass into the Guadalquivir River drainage basin at 0830 and followed the downhill path along another river toward Seville beginning at 0930.

By 1130, the army had effectively surrounded half of Seville while tanks on advantageous areas of the river bank (too deep to snorkel) would ensure no vehicular stragglers made it out intact with their twin 40mm cannons. The first howitzer shells were in the air five seconds before 1200 hours, and the tanks opened fire at 1200 sharp, one second before the howitzer shells hit their targets. Three Nationalist barracks buildings near the perimeter went up in flames moments afterward as the APCs and tanks charged into the city. They were shrugging off Molotov Cocktails easily thanks to engine covers and mowing down enemy infantry while Republican infantry forces followed them closely, entering buildings and fighting house to house.

One Light Tank turned, nearly skidded, around a corner… and came face to face with a captured T-26, the first round fired, by the T-26, smashed into the front of the T-1936A's turret and exploded, having been an explosive shell. The machine gun was fortunately still usable, but that was irrelevant as the two 40mm cannons punched one round each, high explosive and armour-piercing, into the T-26. The differences in armour (80mm at 30 degrees to horizontal vs. 15mm with no appreciable protective angling) were immediately apparent as the rounds, of smaller calibre (by 5mm) than those of the T-26, punched clean through the other tank's hull, it slewed to a halt immediately. Another pair of slugs sent the turret soaring up into the sky as the ammunition cooked off in a catastrophic kill. After the thing landed—upside-down on top of the wrecked hull the light wreckage (under 10 tons) was pushed aside by the Light Tank (though it had to angle its cannons up to do this) and the SI unit proceeded on its way, with only a scar and burnt paint showing where the 45mm round had hit it at close range. That armour plate would need to be patched or replaced when there was time, but for now it would hold just fine.

An APC was damaged in a tank-to-tank action when it was rammed gun-first by a T-26 and the gun was fired point-blank into the hull, ripping a hole in the side with an explosive round fired into a firing port. The round didn't do much more than that, despite the assorted injuries of the infantrymen that had been piling out the rear door to get away from the oncoming improvised projectile. The APC had lurched to a side with the impact but then accelerated to prevent from flipping over (kinetic friction is less than static and less likely to provide enough drag on the far tread to tip the vehicle over) while its buddies blew the T-26 to burning scrap metal with a furious hammering of shells. The inside of the APC looked like a hurricane had been through it, but none of the compartment hatches had opened and nothing had been seriously damaged other than the infantry seat cushions and the hole in the armour. The vehicle was immediately withdrawn from offensive operations for repair, while the rest of First Division ripped through the city's defenders mechanically with Republican troops serving as infantry support (i.e. meat to feed in the grinder, though the casualty rates were lower than normal by far, simply thanks to fire and armour support).

It proved a good reminder to the SI vehicle crews, their hardware may be supremely tough, but invulnerable it was not, especially for APCs' flanks and rears. They were a bit more cautious about rounding corners from then on, and stuck mainly to the larger streets unless it was confirmed that there were enemy armoured vehicles that needed to be eliminated. Even then the job was mostly left to the mortar trucks, which took advantage of the typically paper-thin top armour of most tank designs since the Great War to blow the shit out of the enemy vehicles. Unlike the SI APCs and Tanks, they did not have 60 or 80mm topsides (other than the SI cupolas, which had shield-things to prematurely detonate shells anyways).

In the chaos, the Nationalists tried to escape the city via trucks to the north along the river. Fortunately the strategically placed SI Light Tanks managed to establish enough of a crossfire that very few of the trucks managed to evade, fleeing in the direction of Cadiz and Huelva. Even so, enough made it that Hannah predicted the two cities would be on high alert, still, that, and entrenching, required time, time she wouldn't give the Nationalists. "Republican infantry forces, pacify this city with Second Motorized and First Mechanized, First Motorized and first Light Tank, we head southwest along the river to Cadiz! Assemble south of the city and bring some Republican infantry with you!"

Unfortunately, that made her walk into a trap, as she began to lay siege to Cadiz, it seemed somehow the trucks fleeing Seville had gotten there first and warned them, because high-calibre artillery rounds began chipping at her forces as soon as she entered range. After losing a fully loaded truck and its squad of 9 men (plus over a dozen Republican infantrymen) to a direct hit and sniping the artillery spotter planes with LT guns, She pulled out of range and sent out a few APCs for stealthy recon (the periscope system was good enough to, say, look over a tall hedge row) as her own howitzers prepared to fire. At 29km, they were more than half again the enemy's guns in effective range, as the best other howitzers these days could muster a range of 18 kilometres. Soon the first coordinates began coming in, and her guns began pounding away. After five minutes of bombardment, each gun firing off 40 shells, the APCs and LTs received the order to charge the city, followed by Trucks. Any Nationalist artillery spotters sighted were terminated immediately, but a Light Tank and an APC were still lost to the lessening shell fire, the APC being hit in the rear deck and losing all 6 infantrymen. The crew-passenger bulkhead (the vehicle had 2 bulkheads, one with the driver and engine in front, one separating the rest of the crew compartment from the passengers) barely held the blast of the 8-inch high explosive shell off. The back doors had blown out when the shell punched through and went off, and the APC immediately slewed to a halt. The back drive wheels had lost power and the transmission system was destroyed, the tracks and wheels only staying on by virtue of the sheer durability of the APC. The driver did the only thing he could to not become a sitting duck: He engaged the emergency front-wheel drive system, thankfully the tracks were taut enough to still work as the half-gutted machine rumbled and squeaked onward, falling behind the others slowly, with only a truck pulling up alongside to get ready to repair what was left of the vehicle, the turret still scanning for targets at high alert, powered by the engine in the front of the vehicle.

The port city of Cadiz was surprisingly easy to take once the artillery had been eliminated, simply because nothing else could penetrate, even at close range, the thick armour of the Shepard Industries vehicles. However, there was one small hitch… or rather, one long and destructive hitch.

A Destroyer parked in the harbour had managed to cost Hannah two more APCs (they had already unloaded their men) by taking the vehicles by surprise with its five-inch guns. What followed was a vicious hail of artillery shells frying the dumb fucker into a blind, deaf and dumb hull of a ship, ablaze and being riddled over and over with 40mm holes by Light Tanks that had joined the blazing APC wrecks at the harbour. After the city was finally pacified and they'd saved what they could, including their comrades' remains, two Light Tanks pushed the hacked-up parts of the now no longer burning APC wrecks over the edges and into the water. They'd been mangled far beyond all hope of repair from their ammunition and fuel cooking off and destroying what little had survived the 5-inch shell detonations, so they had to be disposed of to prevent the technology from falling into enemy hands. The weight of the hulks would ensure they couldn't be raised without heavier equipment than could be mustered by special operations infiltrators. By the time infiltrators could get that sort of equipment, it would probably be several decades later and the things would be obsolete anyhow.

The attack went off with no other hitches, and Hannah received news that the Nationalist column planning to attack Cordoba had been sighted en route back to Seville, so she told the men there to prepare an entrapping ambush, as they knew to do. Then she started heading northwest along the coast to Huelva, after, of course, looting every drop of gasoline and capturing what ethanol and methanol she could. Damaged vehicles, and the first broken-down (the tread broke) vehicle she'd had since she started training her men, were left in Cadiz for now as she moved toward Huelva, steamrolling everything in her way. _Damn, I'm getting careless, losing so damned many men… Or maybe it's just that the element of surprise is lost, perhaps I won't hit Huelva after all._

At 1530 on December 31, 1936, Hannah told her men to nap if possible to be ready for night-time combat, the armoured swarm changing direction northward. The message to nap was relayed to the 2000 Republicans she still had hitchhiking with her column. As many of her men dozed, Hannah moved little magnetic pieces around on her map board and listened in on reports of the successful ambush at Seville.

An hour later, at 1630, she radioed Second Division, relaying the message through the Seville-Cordoba line of truck comm. stations that arced north in stealth mode, stretching to Toledo and then into range of Madrid. "Gunter, Take all of Second Division except Second Mechanized and head west-southwest along the Tajo river valley to take it from the Nationalists. Start your first attack at 0800 tomorrow. Take things slow, they're used to us moving fast, I want to attract their attention to that front for now…" She finished with talking about logistics after getting an affirmative out of her brightest pupil and smartest Brigadier. Maybe she should promote him to Major General some time; after all, he did command a Division…

* * *

><p><em>Merida, January 1, 1937<em>

0300 to 0400 hours was when the human body was weakest in its natural cycle, as this was the time when the most hospital patients died. The sentries were dozing at their posts or straining to see in the dim light of the moonless night by 0330. So, it was much to their shock when the first small salvo of howitzer rounds slammed home and exploded on key positions around the city. A heretofore undetectable vibration of the ground—caused by the engines running at low power—turned into a slight shaking as the engines' noises rose to a low roar from the soft humming it had been before. The roar rapidly grew louder as the vehicles lunged out from cover, with their lights only half-on (lower sections, which pointed somewhat downward) and rampaged into the city. The armour was only preceded by the shells and trucks loaded with SI and Republican troops that jumped off to take care of guards emerging from their barracks. The civilians knew better than to come out at night, so there was minimal collateral damage as the small garrison (it was after all DEEP in Nationalist territory on all sides) was overrun and eradicated within half an hour. Republican flags went up all over the city as they, with the Shepard Industries troops forming the tip of the spear, claimed the settlement.

Even before the last pockets of resistance were fully cleared Hannah's armoured forces were racing west toward Badajoz, the trucks following soon thereafter. By 0500 they were poised to launch another attack in the dark. It was another overwhelming success as most of the garrison was killed by artillery fire in their sleep. The soldiers even found a telegram about how Merida was under attack, but apparently the telegram station hadn't gone on-shift yet… THAT was a great source of mirth, talked about even as the men bought up every drop of fuel they could find.

Hannah stayed in the area for a week, letting supplies catch up to replenish her half-depleted ammunition (the worst was the artillery guns). In the meantime, Gunter von Esling's three Brigades were presenting a huge threat to the Nationalist heartland from their positions sitting near some major cities, and Hannah's position, able to outflank the Nationalists, made her another major threat. She'd moved First Mechanized up to her location from Seville, and that made things even more alarming as the Nationalists moved troops up from Huelva via Portugal to try to blockade her.

Unfortunately for them, as they discovered in Huelva as January 9th, 1937 dawned, they had neglected the fact that Hannah's vehicles could refuel on the move (and thus stay moving for a long, long time) so long as the speed was not more than economy speed (it was economy for the main reason that drag from bumps was minimal up till then). Of course, this required the commander and gunner not be working the turret in a Light Tank or for two infantrymen to be conscripted if it was an APC and they had infantry, but that was beside the point. Howitzer rounds rained down on the military installations—courtesy of Republican air scouts sighting—throughout the city while Tanks, APCs, and Trucks rampaged through the streets shooting anything that tried to shoot back or wore Nationalist colours. The usual house-to-house fighting however took a day to complete, thanks to the Nationalists having entrenched rather firmly, despite most of them having been pulled out to reinforce the main front. The mortar trucks helped greatly, as did the urban assault capabilities of Motorized and Mechanized Infantry, but what really tipped the speed into reasonability was the howitzers' fire support.

After thoroughly pacifying the southern regions of Spain, and leisurely moving back to the front, Hannah received alarming news. Nationalist forces were making another offensive in the north against Oviedo and Gijon, with estimated 250 Italian tanks and a large number of artillery guns and supporting vehicles, plus large amounts of infantry. She had a feeling it was to distract her into going around in hopes of either buying some time before her assault on the highlands of Spain or launching some other actual offensive before she could lunge back and crush it. Then again, it could be a real offensive to try to achieve coast denial, which would force supplies to go to Cadiz/Huelva, through Gibraltar, or through France. Fortunately for Hannah, her father had made friends in France and so all her supplies came in through the border anyhow.

Speaking of family, Jane's letters had indicated favourable progress on several research projects, such as a fairly compact V16 engine that produced 1250 horsepower being ready for end testing and fitting into their All-Purpose Aircraft design. She also talked about favourable developments being made in naval gunnery and King starting to rebuild the shipyards as a way to make jobs and to provide yards for the new carrier designs Shepard Industries had proposed.

* * *

><p>AN: I got inspiration for parts of the below dialogues, in concept only, from Changing The Times (it's a website about historical fiction), the fic "THE 'CAN-DO' CARRIERS: CANADA GOES TO SEA" since the idea is fairly similar.

* * *

><p><em>Royal Canadian Air Force HQ, Ottawa, December 29, 1936<em>

"Well hell Neil, it's good to see you again…" Air Vice Marshal Budet slapped his friend on the back heartily, they'd become friends via several encounters in France on R&R, not to mention saving each other's asses a couple times.

"Hello Air Vice Marshal… I have a business and military proposition for you."

Budet's eyes narrowed "Does this have anything to do with the madly successful campaign your baby girl is trailblazing across Spain?"

"Well… yes."

"Hah, thought so, what exactly is this proposition? And be straight with me, I still haven't figured out what exactly you were saying about your wife the last time we got drunk." Neil sighed and covered his face in shame, it had been the one time he'd been out partying with his friends, right before they came back from France, and Henry and Budet had wormed some stuff out of him, unfortunately for them he was too far gone for anyone except deities to understand.

"If we can get aircraft carriers, will you be willing to lend me air force units for training, and swap them around whenever our existing pilots begin suffering combat exhaustion?"

Budet blinked once, he had NOT been expecting that one "Carriers? Brother, where do you think you'll get the budget?" then he blinked again and sighed "Your older daughter, and for the record she's absolutely gorgeous," Men tended to fall all over themselves when Hannah really amped up her charms, but that was beside the point "managed to persuade King to fund an expeditionary force in the middle of the worst recession ever, I wouldn't be surprised if your younger girl could worm the cash for a few carriers out of King. I'm guessing it's the usual right? They'll be owned by Shepard Industries, Hannah's Private Military Company with primary allegiance to Canada? Just to make sure Allied high command can't just send our men on stupid missions?"

"Yes, and the same could be said of the aviators, I only need to borrow some squadrons for the initial work, and between wars, fifty percent of Shepard Industries gear and men are at the disposal of the Canadian Government anyhow. During wars we'll be on-call, and, as you put it, not make young Canadians available for cannon fodder."

"If you guys can get a carrier, some suitable aircraft, and I can get authorization from King and the Cabinet, I'll give you whatever squadrons I can. Maybe it's not as much as I'd like, but it's what I can give you."

"Thanks, Vice Marshal, could you come up with me and Jane to Parliament in a couple days to talk to Mr. King? Jane will help fill you in on the plans for warships, and the doctrine, in these two days if you have time."

Budet snorted "Oh please, my office mostly does wilderness charting and looking for lost people or planes, and few enough incidents happen that I'm bored half the time anyhow. Bring your daughter, if she's anything like her sister then she'll be really kind to the eyes."

"May I remind you sir that you are married already and that Jane will not appreciate you staring at her?"

"Just like I don't appreciate you calling me Air Vice Marshal all the time?" The two friends chuckled at their teasing before shaking hands and exchanging goodbyes.

* * *

><p><em>Parliament, Ottawa, December 31, 1936<em>

Prime Minister Mackenzie King was nodding approvingly to himself as he read the newspaper report on more victories, with an accompanying map of Spain showing territories taken by SI troops from the Nationalists. There was an accompanying article on the execution of several thousand men caught raping and murdering helpless civilians by SI troops during the capture of Malaga. Alongside it was an article on a support rally organized by citizens for SI happening in downtown Toronto. It seemed the media was taking the actual committing of the force to battle better than they took the training. They'd been of divided opinions during those months, though the furor died down to a low roar, but now the front pages were filled almost daily by reports of more victories. Some newspapers had actually expressed doubts as to the victories' speed and low casualties, but after sending reports over the sea through France, well, they ceded that it was indeed true and instead began raving about the sheer genius of General Shepard and her Private Military Company. King's popularity, as well as that of Shepard Industries, grew, him for subsidizing them, since most of Canada didn't want to fight any future wars under British generals, and General Shepard was a home-grown hero figure who achieved huge successes with very few losses and forces committed to battle.

Wars tended to be unpopular affairs unless it was so lopsided in losses as to be mystical, but if there had to be a war, the fact that the unemployment had dropped rather sharply helped its popularity greatly. There was also the fact that being technically a Private Military Company that had sworn support to Canada, the main body of the Canadian Army, now under a different name, could not just be absorbed in battle as part of the British Empire's armies and ordered about by British Generals. Though Hannah Shepard was still an honorary General of the Canadian Army, the title was "honorary only" which meant the British couldn't just order her around. Canada couldn't really micromanage her either but she didn't need someone else to command her except in general directions anyhow. Aircraft squadrons went the same way, in that SI gear would always be Canadian while everything else sent ran the risk of conscription by the British.

_You know, I almost wish Jane Shepard would come in the front door right now and give me another neat solution. I still don't know where Neil Shepard's daughters manage to pull out all these detailed plans and such from, but if it's out of their asses, well, then those are some fine as…_ King was thinking when the door opened and the guards announced Jane's arrival with her father in tow, _speak of the devil…_ He smiled to himself before settling into his seat, turning his head away from looking out his window and greeting the visitors. "Your sister, I must say, Miss Shepard, is quite impressive." King stated simply, gesturing to the newspaper.

"Thank you, sir, I heard you preferred bluntness and honesty, am I correct?"

"Would you believe me if I said yes?" one corner of King's mouth twitched upward in a smirk "I am a politician after all… but in fact, yes, I do, please be as blunt as you wish… so long that no actual blunt trauma, or sharp trauma for that matter, occurs to anyone in the room." The guards chuckled with the PM at that, and Jane smiled, tucking some of her dull red hair, the colour of old blood, behind her ears. "Just get the point across, that's all I ask."

"Well then I'll believe you, sir, because honestly, the supply situation in Spain is getting somewhat ridiculous." Jane stated, as hammer-like as she wanted and King had agreed to.

King's eyebrows flew up, Hannah had not mentioned anything in her occasional reports, and he was sure that if there was a real difficulty with supplies then she would have said something "Really? Why?"

"Last letter got from her said she was getting supplies through the French border because of the blockade by the Germans and Italians. How much of a navy do we have, Mr. King?"

"I…" King suddenly frowned "I am not sure of exact numbers, but it IS very small."

"I believe there are five or six destroyers and maybe four thousand men involved? I don't know how many smaller boats we have, but for a country bordered on three sides by water we have a very small navy. In the Great War we ran convoys across the Atlantic, so I'm proposing we fund some building projects, especially along the West Coast as a way to stimulate economic growth and skilled trades, since we will need many technically capable people and convoy-capable ships for the next war when it comes."

"I understand what you mean, Jane, so what building projects are we exactly trying here? Which classes of ships? Because I'm guessing you mean ships, yes?"

"Well, sir, I recommend Corvettes, Frigates, Destroyers and Carriers. We have the schematics for the ships, outfitted with gear well beyond modern standards. The hardware is all either good to go or, in case of some carrier systems, in the finishing stages of design in SI R&D departments, and we can expect them to be ready before 1937 is over, so I'm suggesting that we lay down some war-and-peace vessels."

"War-and-peace? Please explain, and don't worry, other than New Year's celebrations I really don't do much at this time of year, what paperwork I have gets dealt with fast thanks to experience on the job. About your ship types, I'm a bit concerned; we couldn't even build the destroyers we have, had to buy them from the British. Modifying the transports didn't take that much work, so we could do it, but we had to buy them from the British…"

"This is a problem, sir, a big one, we are a country surrounded by water on three sides, yet we can't manufacture our own shipping capacity to move our own goods and men, doesn't something seem wrong about that? Whatever suits the priorities of the ship's owners would take precedence over what would be good for Canada. By war-and-peace ships I mean warships which can carry enough cargo that they would function well in peace time, for example delivering relief supplies to disaster zones or conflict zones where their firepower, armour and speed will be very useful. The modular nature of most of the designs we suggest also allow for extensive upgrading, so much so that in twenty, or even forty years we could still sell the ships to small countries looking for reliable, easily maintained gear and get a huge profit. Do you want some specifics on the vessels?"

"Why not, if we're committing to this, and I have a feeling we might be, I need to know just what about this makes the deal so sweet."

"Easy, sir, this project will create tens of thousands of jobs and inject a lot of the treasury money we have lying around back into the economy, which is already starting to look up. Besides, with well-trained crews and such, our merchantmen could start the next war with a huge advantage in terms of trained convoy escorts, plus striking capabilities."

"Well that's great and all, but what about the war-and-peace part?"

Jane smiled "Easy sir, the corvettes, each displacing 1500 tons according to projections at combat loads, can carry up to 800 tons of cargo each without reducing seaworthiness or combat efficiency, that's equal to adding another merchantman every time four and a half corvettes are with a convoy, sir, assuming an average merchantman to carry 3600 tons cargo. Each Frigate, displacing 5000 tons combat-ready, can carry up to 3500 tons additional cargo without affecting seaworthiness."

"Those are not corvettes and frigates; they're closer to destroyer escorts and cruisers by displacement." King remarked with a frown.

"Exactly, few raiders are pocket-battleships, but that's what we keep Destroyers for, most of them are U-boats or small ships, and they will not be expecting six 200mm, and that's 7.9 inch or so, guns on a Frigate. It'll help keep them guessing as to the true strength of an escort force, and since we designed the things so squat and stable in the water, they have shallow draught and will appear smaller than their guns would typically class them as, so the raiders will be the ones surprised most of the time. Still, the principle of war-and-peace sounds right to us designers, we'll just need some funding to go ahead with the project. The Medium and Light Carriers are probably going to be used as aircraft ferries and to fly support for convoys, and, if Tokyo and Washington keep on going on their current paths, support our US allies. We'll need them for a war in Europe too, not just against the Japanese."

"I can imagine Churchill's face when he realizes we have a better modernized fleet than he does… Those German ships he got from Scapa Flow are really hindering his funding, the _Ark Royal_ is still not quite finished yet… How much will it cost? Give me a price per ship, corvettes, frigates, destroyers, light carriers, and medium carriers."

"About ten or twelve million dollars per medium carrier for the first two, build cost, not purchase cost, even with SI providing most of the raw materials, we'll still need to expand operations and such and that won't be that cheap even though we'll do our utmost to save money. Later ones can cut the cost to about eight million each. Light Carriers will cost seven million for the first two and after that five million each. I'm suggesting that we start work on two Medium Carriers, the _Ontario_ and _Quebec_ respectively, starting immediately. The West Coast is still hit hard by the Depression, and it's not getting any of the jobs created all across the east end of the country thanks to our joint efforts, so a shipbuilding program in Vancouver would be very welcome for all of us. It would be more work and ships with a subsidy for us business people, a way to avoid Canadian soldiers being conscripted by Allied Supreme Command, and of course, better readiness for the brewing conflict. Our crews will have time to train and get used to their ships, and of course the citizens will support their government more because of the creation of jobs. By the way, sir, the cost of the shipyards will only be ten million, for the two large slipways needed. The east coast can build escorts, we just need a few major yards with a few slips each to mass-produce heavy freighters and escorts."

"A thirty-four million dollar program… well I dare say that British Columbia will definitely be drooling over the prospect, but what are your reasons for choosing it?"

Jane shrugged "Because the mild weather makes welding easier, since there's not so much worry about temperature fluctuations stressing or tightening a half-done job left for the next day or anything like that. The East Coast is going to be needed for producing convoy escorts, what I've already mentioned to you. By the way, our Destroyers will re-define the term, we're planning for six 11.8-inch or 300 millimetre guns on each, with a secondary battery of twelve 100mm guns in dual turrets on the flanks and super-firing."

King's eyes widened slightly "My God… that would rank them as Pocket Battleships…"

"Exactly, but those three classes will be the only escort ships we'll build, I'm just squeezing what I can out of the displacements of the ships. We don't need cruisers to hold territory, nor giant-gun battleships to slug it out at close range. Gunnery tests by the US Navy have proven aircraft are better at destroying ships than the other way around, or even ships against ships. We have a highly reliable, modular, high-powered, efficient and relatively light oil-fired engine system for the warships, and it's ready to enter mass production, and we're planning on using different numbers of the same thirty-thousand-horsepower drives on different ships. That makes production a lot cheaper"

"An interesting idea, modular designs…" King mused.

"Most of the turrets are modular too, so it just requires a quick layover at a yard to have a smashed turret replaced with a new one, or upgrade to some new weapon, which is bound to happen sooner or later. A really nice thing about this agreement is that though Shepard Industries would like to retain priority for future projects using the same yards, the Canadian Government will actually own them, though they may be leased to companies at times for their projects, it will be a good way to make money. In the future, as the poorer and more technologically backward countries catch up, the cheap labour is bound to move lots of manufacturing there, but crafting sophisticated, high-tech vessels in a setting where the average person is poor and badly paid is not a good idea, if only because of fear of technological theft or the sheer complexity of the things. So they'll come to us for the job instead, and we can make money off them. The project will pay for itself very quickly once things get rolling, and I even have some new plans for a couple large slips on the east coast for mass production of Escort Carriers that are only Escort in name, and can actually keep pace with the fleet. We'll have faster merchantmen and escorts than anyone else, making the trip to Britain and back far safer. Less lost ships for us means greater approval from the home front even with a war."

King nodded sagely "Alright, I agree with you, you Shepard girls are just ingenious… how did you get them Mr. Shepard?"

Neil shrugged "Spent twenty years trying, sir, as I told you, my family is rather… long-lived, though not that fertile, despite the effort we put into it."

They all chuckled at that "Well back on topic, alright, this does seem to be a good idea. I'm assuming you'll be supervising the project?"

"Well we've contracted several other companies to educate our men on pre-fabricated parts and massive welding projects, since our tanks are the biggest thing we currently weld routinely, but yes I'll be supervising the overall project."

"Well I'll be very happy to see the ships roll off the slips about a year from now, Miss Jane Shepard, I just need to convene a cabinet meeting and we can get all this rolling." They all stood up to move out, King signalling one guards to call the ministers for a meeting "Thanks for the political considerations Jane, the Quebecers won't be annoyed and neither will those from the other provinces with the names."

It didn't bother anyone that practice work with scrap Great War-era transports would tie up the recruited welders and engineers until late March of 1937. That was when, their training complete, they were unleashed on the prepared steel supply and finely cast/cut parts that had been produced mostly in Shepard Industries steel mills. It meant a frenetic pace of work for the next nine months, two ten-hour shifts a day, with only the night just being guards, until the hulls were launched but that was beside the point, at least for now. It also hadn't bothered King when he found the Air Vice Marshal waiting outside his office, Budet was simply recruited into the entourage after some laughs thanks to a joke by King "Oh, so you brought the heavy artillery huh Miss Shepard?"

* * *

><p><em>City of Santander, North Coast of Spain, January 14<em>_th__, 1937_

The problem in Spain was that Hannah didn't have enough Divisions to watch all three current or potential conflict zones at the time. She would need at least one to watch the southern border of the plateau most Nationalist territory sat on, one in the northern coastal regions, and one in the east, watching the Ebro Valley to Madrid line including a three-way mountain pass that led up to the Nationalists' plateau. She had two divisions of safe sizes, any smaller than three brigades and there would be a risk of simply being swamped even though unit for unit she was far superior to the enemy at present, and her men had training, doctrine and experience as good as any other soldiers in the world. For her eight brigades there were four assault zones the Nationalists could use. The first was a relatively low region of the mountains around the plateau that formed a pass on the Valladolid-Bilbao line, near the head of the Ebro Valley. Option Two was directly along the northern coast's relatively even terrain. Option Three was the three-way pass that sat roughly in the middle of Madrid and Zaragoza, with the pass still in Nationalist hands it presented two directions in which an attack could be mounted, to the northeast or southwest. Option Four was the pass to Salamanca that was directly north of her location, studded with heavy artillery and entrenchments. No doubt the Nationalists were also digging into the pass near Madrid as well, which meant only one option was open to her. Travelling by heavy freight trains brought her to Santander within short order, and her men prepared to move west, hugging the mountains to achieve maximum surprise, having stuffed their white tarps into storage after drying them, and returned to their green-and-brown camouflage scheme.

Carrying three fuel equivalents proved exceedingly useful as Hannah looped around the Nationalist forces arrayed around Gijon with ease. The enemy seemed to have stopped attacking Gijon and balled up into a defensive formation with many anti-tank ditches and traps. Unfortunately for them, sticking to the mountainous terrain meant Hannah and her First Division arrived in Corunna only a day after disembarking from Santander. They succeeded in completely shocking the defenders as armoured vehicles rolled into the city streets and thousands of Republican infantrymen they'd brought with them were disgorged.

A few companies of APCs forming a communication relay responded that the force near Gijon hadn't moved yet, so Hannah spent a day looting all the gasoline in the city—a tanker in harbour fulfilled all her needs—and pacifying it before rolling her way southeast, straight into the enemy's heartland. Second Division had also been moved, leaving behind several thousand cardboard tanks, APCs and trucks, plus a radio set. They had rolled around the long way, through the secondary path between Madrid and the Ebro valley just south of the main passage, before following the valley up to the coast, then proceeding west to sort of surround the unaware Nationalist forces at Gijon. Through truck recon of the area revealed no ambushers, so all was good as the Second Division snuck up on their foes. No doubt they would be moving out soon, as Hannah struck into the main plateau the Nationalists used as the core of their power and, now, a sort of stronghold. At least, that was what Esling thought.

Oddly, the tactics later known as blitzkrieg had the effect of not triggering the enemy's alerts because telegraph wires had been disconnected at junction stations before Corunna was overrun, to maintain comm. blackout for the enemy. This meant that no one had any idea that Shepard Industries troops were rolling toward the relatively unguarded pass and the alert was not raised until a bunker sighted the armoured column before dawn on January 16. In reality, it drove right by the hidden pillbox's firing slits, and the people inside noticed not so much due to the camouflage colours not blending in as due to the ground trembling as tank after tank, APC after APC rolled by in an interminable wave of hostile armoured units screening a huge convoy of trucks loaded down with extra troops and supplies. It was almost like how, decades ago, men had watched the formerly German warships steam out of Scapa Flow after the armistice, now piloted and worked by men of the victorious Allied nations. (A/N: I changed history, I made Germany smarter.) The sets of treads rolling by roughly in formation seemed to rumble onward nearly forever as the telegram man in the pillbox tapped out repeatedly "armoured units detected, armoured units detected."

In a rare display of competence in the face of such tactics, all artillery guns in the city of Leon, less than a hundred kilometres to the east, were scrambled and readied for immediate action, shells stored further away now to prevent magazine-fire style blasts from destroying the batteries. Of course, there was the fact that, if the shells were set off in a chain reaction, the batteries would be useless anyways. The recon trucks observed the enemy artillery positions from the cover of vegetation, or rather soldiers from the trucks crept through and observed enemy positions. The enemy did not have enough warning to lay mines, so the infantry advance was undetected even when they used periscope-style binoculars to observe the Nationalist positions.

Though the Nationalists had time to dig in their artillery and put them behind some semblance of camouflage, the same could not be said for some of their artillery shells, which were sitting out in the open. Those were carefully observed by the soldiers and some basic calculations were performed and checked before the information was relayed back to the recon trucks, which had been sent out in a platoon of four trucks covered by the two APCs of the Command Section. Since the mortars had a reliable range of 3600 meters and the 40mm cannon up to five or six kilometres, the moment they relayed the signal up the ranks the trucks and APCs of 2nd Platoon, 2nd Company (1st Company was forming the comm. link between the Divisions), 1st Battalion, 2nd Motorized were given authorization to "Engage enemy ammunition and fuel stores, but only at long range, do not attract too much attention to yourselves, retreat if detected, but wreak whatever havoc you can before you are detected."

The two APCs coordinated for a moment before each using the gun-sight settings for the calculated distances to aim, and waited for the mortar crew in the truck to finish calculations on a third ammo pile that was visible. They had all moved out of the copse of trees and took up positions next to the woods they had come through, though it had taken a lot of trouble to sneak through woods with huge APCs and trucks. After all, according to surprise attack doctrine, sometimes hiding wasn't good if it's obvious where you're hiding. Assuming competence on the Nationalists' part, at least a few pieces must have been trained on the tree line already… The platoon commander gave the order to fire once he knew that all three long-ranged guns were ready.

The guns only got off two volleys before the vehicles had to RUN, the fact that they were already turned back helped greatly, since the sheets of flames that erupted from the city weren't just ammunition piles going up. The first Nationalist artillery barrage had landed in the copse of trees they'd occupied before, but it was inaccurate enough that everyone was very glad they had moved like doctrine had told them to. They would otherwise at best have been flipped onto a side and at worst been destroyed by the barrage, despite its spread.

As the alarm was rung on the west side of the city and artillery was shifted to that side of the city in preparation for a major surge of enemy forces, similar blasts occurred on the northern perimeter. Then the south and the east lines went up, leaving the defenders frazzled as they ran around trying to move guns into position and protect what ammunition they had left. The main surge, however, seemed to be coming from the northwest, as clouds of dust were stirred up by heavily armoured vehicles charging downhill toward the city, so most of the artillery pieces that could actually destroy the enemy armoured units were vectored to that zone to rain down long-range fire on the enemy… even though the enemy were still fifteen minutes away.

That was why the Nationalists were shocked dumb as howitzer rounds rained down on the artillery positions of the southeast sector, observed and pinpointed by soldiers watching the defensive reorganization. Hundreds of armoured vehicles surged into the city from the southeast, providing extreme fire support for infantrymen as they eviscerated shocked enemy soldiers in house-to-house combat, doing their best to not harm civilians, though a few were wounded for trying to raise a weapon at the SI troops. The Republican infantry was less merciful, anyone raising a weapon on them would be shot or bayoneted, but it was understandable… more or less.

The Republican trucks on the northwest approach vector turned back after that, having lost two out of the twenty trucks that had been dragging brambles behind them to stir up as much dust as they could, in addition to towing cardboard "Tanks" mounted on broken, salvaged wheels (with so much drag they didn't want to move downhill) behind them to help enforce the image of an armoured advance. They set fire to the cardboard "Tanks" as they passed them, giving the illusion that a retreat had been ordered after intolerable losses.

The Nationalist artillery crews stopped celebrations when they realized what was wrong to the southeast, turning their guns around in preparation of facing enemy armour that would come out of the city through the streets, most likely. A sharp whistling prompted them to throw themselves to the ground as howitzer shells broke the dirt around them, then the surviving gun crews tried to determine which direction the shells had come from by looking up while waiting for the next barrage "They're from the northwest!" One shouted in alarm.

That was before the ground began shaking, pre-empting the gun crews to hunker down and prepare to engage enemy armoured units. Their communications had failed earlier under fire, so they had no idea the danger that was coming. The guns were either pointed northwest or southeast toward the city roads… so it was too late when the tall grass crinkled under the broad tracks of the APCs and Light Tanks roaring in from due north and due west. These were elements of the 1st Light Tank Brigade, which had already eliminated most of the North and West batteries by mortar and howitzer fire. The 1st Mechanized and the 1st and 2nd Motorized were the ones crashing through the city, slowly accruing losses along the way, which was not good, but the kill-to-death ratio was still so favourable that the victory wouldn't even be close to pyrrhic in nature.

The artillery batteries the Nationalists had assembled managed to exact their toll still, destroying two APCs and three Light Tanks (mainly as the latter were targeted first due to twin cannon being seen as more threatening) in addition to two trucks. Fortunately, most of the materials were salvageable, especially armour plating needed to patch damage from anti-tank guns to several other vehicles. Over the next weeks, while urban combat was ongoing between the infantry of the two sides and SI troops provided fire support, the countryside from Corunna to Leon was pacified and more Republican troops moved up via rail. The cities of Vigo and the two primary cities the Nationalists had left were untouched… for good reason. Hannah wanted more forces, and more importantly, air support. There was also the fact that the Nationalists had by this point entrenched themselves too much for an attack without air support to be favourable to her. She wanted to hit Vigo, but the city had dug in and had a German cruiser in town, with guns adequate in range to fight her howitzers. She couldn't be too far for fear of running out of ammunition before sinking the bastard (her guns weren't THAT accurate), and it would take a LOT of 100mm shells to sink a cruiser, if it could be done at all. So she would REALLY appreciate some naval and air support at this point… and she said so in her letter to King.

Of course, the beside-the-point surrender of the Nationalists that had once been attacking Gijon was an afterthought. They'd been punished badly enough by Esling when attempting to leave the area that they just gave up.

* * *

><p>AN: I deleted the historical scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet for some good reasons, so please don't flame me for it. It would actually have been a smart move for the Germans, since I changed the treaty terms to simply divide up the ships, not including the "scrap them within 5 years of getting them" part. As mentioned in passing by Jane, the British shipbuilding program is much slowed by the upkeep costs of the once-German ships.

As we can see, SI troops are not invulnerable, but men will still be clamouring all over themselves to serve under the Shepard Industries flag thanks to comparative casualty rates.

I'm sorry about taking inspiration from that other guy's story, but I gave credit and I didn't plagiarize, so I don't think anything's wrong with it. I understand that launching the first two N-CM-1937A (Navy, Carrier, Medium, first built in 1937) ships in nine months even with materials ready is difficult, but with twenty hours of work a day and blueprints prepared and mass production taken into consideration by a pair of geniuses who'd mapped out everything already, I believe it to be doable. It also takes the Quebec political problem into consideration, though enemy torpedoes and bombs won't (hint, hint!).

REVIEW!


	6. The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

A/N: Will SI side with GDI or Nod? Are you serious? Which do Jane and Hannah's production and design principles sound like?

* * *

><p>Chapter 6: The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea<p>

_Off West Coast of Spain, Near City of Vigo, April 1, 1937_

With the break in the campaigns in Spain, the men in the SI Brigades had a period of training and rest. This was to, as Hannah explained in a letter to King, give the Republicans time to fight for themselves and win some victories against a weakened Nationalist military. That would translate to better national pride and more stable political situation during the next war, so more support was likely for the Allies from Spain. It also helped keep the jobs gained from supplying the force going, at least for a while, and for additional forces to be trained, with justified reasons, instead of "Oh we need to be ready for the next war with Germany" which the public wasn't fully ready to accept yet, though many politicians had been turned to their side.

When Hannah requested Jane recruit female troops, she found out that Jane was already on it, despite the fact that training an army of women was much harder a task than men. The classes were much smaller simply because they had to be coaxed into lots of things i.e. slithering through mud, digging foxholes and lots of other dirty jobs. Of course, it was good that the first two months would mainly be physical and theory training in the form of exercises for strength and lectures for knowledge. Actual combat training began in March, and even then it was mainly winter warfare training first, and urban, using the abandoned town nearby. Said town was only kept abandoned by being included in the training area, since quite a few jobs were in the area, mostly services, though most of those were in the compound itself.

In the meantime, the final practice jobs of welding teams—four men each—had been on N-EC-1937As, more often known as Corvettes, each team had assembled a section from parts, and then putting them together to build a whole corvette. Of course, most other factions would not consider it a corvette, but it was good for misinformation and so the classification was kept. Displacing 1500 tons combat-ready, it was able to take on 800 tons additional cargo without affecting seaworthiness. Armed with seven dual 40mm turrets (using the seven S-WM-15A mounts) for AA and anti-fast-attack work, the design was quite hefty in light armament. However, the four torpedo tubes in the bow, dual 100mm cannon, 60mm hull plating, and six rapid-reload depth charge divots in the rear made it a formidable if small opponent. The last weapon type was concealed within the hull itself to keep the rear deck and the cargo elevator present clear, and the torpedo tubes were built into the bulge in the base of the bow submarine-style. The stern deck cargo elevator was quite absurdly huge, 20 meters by 10 meters, virtually able to carry anything conceivable, including multiple fast-attack boats with its ability to comfortably raise and lower goods up to 100 tons in weight and, when stationary and forming part of the storage deck, be watertight and hold goods up to 600 tons on it without breaking (it was not tested beyond that).

This wasn't just a cruise across the sea to test the design of the two 75-meter-long ships for real, it was also to test their weapons, especially the 600mm torpedoes, against larger ships. The ships had loaded enough oil in their tanks to cruise 5000 nautical miles at economy speed, which was still very high—30 knots—compared to most ships of their weight and size, but their extra cargo capacity had been taken up by armoured vehicles and extra trained men (they'd trained a couple hundred extras in addition to the 32000 original troops) transported across the sea to replenish losses and ammunition supplies in secured crates. They weren't carrying the two fast-attacks that they theoretically would carry inside to deploy against larger ships. That was because the fast-attack boats were still on the drawing boards, but that was beside the point for now as the ships cruised toward the coast with their weapons and crews ready for action. Sure, politically it might not be a very good idea, but the Cabinet had agreed that Germany needed a good reminder why not to violate the Washington Naval Treaty. Said Treaty restricted displacement for any single German warship to 10,000 tons, which information obtained about the cruiser in Vigo harbour indicated it obviously exceeded.

The Corvettes entered Vigo harbour stealthily at 0000 hours, running dark and silent, their dark blue-grey topside paint allowing them to blend into the night while their lighter bottoms kept them from visibility below most of the time. The German cruiser in harbour was parked calmly there, bobbing slightly with the gentle waves, its main turrets aiming high and pointed inland, ready to fire at the first sign of an SI offensive toward the city. It had been obvious that SI and Republican troops had been arrayed to attack from the east, and were still 30-plus kilometres away, so it was a stand-off for now. The initial ground advance had been found by air recon and a fast retreat under fire from the cruiser's 8-inch guns had had to be executed to avoid additional, unnecessary, casualties.

Well, it was a stand-off between the city and army until the two corvettes, both executing a snail-speed, almost drift-like turn to port starting facing the cruiser's stern (it was parked facing north), ripple-fired their torpedo tubes. Right as eight pencil lines, lightly visible thanks to bio-luminescence, sliced the water toward the cruiser, still at anchor and unaware it was soon to come under attack, the torpedo room crews on the corvettes frantically began reloading the four tubes on each. Each N-EC-1937A (Navy, Escort: Corvette, of the class first deployed in 1937, first model deployed) carried four extra torpedoes as reloads, but it would take at least a minute for a crew to reload a pair of the 2.25-ton weapons even with the loading machines. In the meantime, the water in the harbour rippled violently as eight 450-kg high explosive charges detonated against the hull of the Heavy Cruiser _Admiral Hipper_, which had been built in flagrant disregard for the Washington Naval Treaty. Its eight 8-inch guns, in four double turrets, did nothing for it as it was literally thrown sideways into the pier it was parked at the end of, crumpling the armour on that side and nearly tipping the ship onto the pier. Still, the real damage had been done beneath the waterline, as the four deep-running torpedoes had snapped the ship's spine in three places and left a huge hole on the fourth hit, as the ship had already begun listing and settling by then.

Top pair and bottom pair torpedoes were given different settings upon loading into the tubes on all SI ships with four tubes, the top pair ran shallow at typically a meter beneath the waterline, while the bottom pair ran deeper at seven meters unless set again to run shallower. As the cruiser's port side guns, the two turrets not blown sky-high by a secondary magazine explosion, slewed outward to try to target the small targets and searchlights stabbed out toward them the corvettes accelerated hard. The two small craft little more than a third the cruiser's length were firing their relatively puny 100mm guns at the secondary turrets of the cruiser, using their new fire-control systems to achieve direct hits on the turrets at medium range. A volley of four shells put a pair of the secondary guns of the cruiser out of commission, but before the other still-functional turret could fire there was a violent lurch in the ship. The water surging into the broken bottom had depleted buoyancy enough that leaning on the half-crushed pier was no longer enough to hold the doomed ship up and it slid off with a screech of tortured metal and crumbling of concrete. The gun crews did their best to elevate their guns, and the result was that instead of a great center-mass shot they only sheared off the top half of the unarmoured funnel of the second corvette instead of smashing one or two of its six water-tight compartments open.

As the _Admiral Hipper_, on its first active duty patrol, began to settle it began to tilt to port, thanks to the four holes now entering the water allowing more water to pour in, and soon men began to abandon ship as the order was issued. It was then that the corvettes stopped firing their guns, having used armour-piercing ammunition to rake the dying cruiser as best they could from a range of six kilometres. Soon the sinking ship hit the bottom of the harbour in four pieces, its guns inoperable… partly as most of the ship had settled with a list of 75 degrees!

That was perfect as the general attack on the city began, while the corvettes picked up sailors from the water and the soldiers onboard guarded them, giving them dry blankets and mugs of warm water to drink as they sat shivering on the decks of the corvettes. They were dropped off on the pier next to their comrades, the ones who'd escaped, without seeing any factional markings or getting told who their captors were. The two corvettes simply moved off after that into the night. Needless to say, the attack managed to eliminate the opposition at low cost and took the city, and then Hannah sent the Germans back home in a freighter bound for Germany that was supposed to leave in the afternoon but had been blockaded in by the corvettes. After the freighter left, the corvettes re-entered the port, unloaded their gear and munitions then took on more fuel and set off back toward home. The assessment was that the corvettes' performance was quite excellent in their trial by fire. The _Admiral Hipper_ would eventually be salvaged for scrap, as it wasn't worth repairing.

The occupation of the city and surrounding countryside was fairly simple and went off smoothly while Republican troops, plus Hannah's First Division held the Leon line as it was now called. Unfortunately there were still informants around, as there typically were in cities, and so it was that the first major diplomatic crisis began once the owner of the corvettes was revealed.

* * *

><p>AN: I realize I'm changing the launching of _Hipper_ to the date of commission, but let's say it was laid down even earlier and/or work went faster…

* * *

><p><em>Parliament, Ottawa, April 4, 1937<em>

"We've gotten congratulations from Stalin in the Soviet Union, Daladier in France, and Churchill in Britain for a job well done as well as an inquiry by Britain into buying some of your torpedoes and launchers. That being said, we also have an angry telegram from Herr Hitler about the incident where two of our corvettes successfully sank one of his 'heavy' cruisers in a single volley of fire." King informed Jane at the latest monthly meeting in Ottawa. Jane had stayed a couple of extra days in case of political backlash from proving the SI Corvette design quite valid. There was, as predicted, backlash… and so here they were "My response is still pending, but right now it's that 'Shepard Industries is merely subsidized by the Canadian government, not necessarily ordered to a task, they are after all a privately owned company. Although we have paid for the dispatch their forces to assist the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and their supplying through our ports, they have operational freedom. Your warship was bombarding the joint forces of SI and Republican Spain, therefore retribution occurred before the nationality of the attacking ship could be ascertained. We apologize for this sad mistake and would like to send our condolences to the families of those sailors who perished. Signed: Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King'."

"That sounds reasonable, avoids a toe-to-toe confrontation with Germany while still getting the point across that if Herr Hitler decides to play with fire he will get burned." Jane stated amiably, nodding.

"Alright, let's go persuade the House and Senate that this is a good idea, the Cabinet already agrees after the speech you gave at the Carrier Conference as it's called these days in Parliament." King stated simply "And… there should be a House meeting this afternoon, in two hours, and a Senate meeting tomorrow at noon."

And so it was that at 1400 hours on April the Fifth in the nineteen-thirty-seventh Year of Our Lord that Jane Shepard appeared before the House of Commons. She had been introduced by a short speech by the Prime Minister "Members of Parliament, representatives of our people, four days ago, as you know, the German Heavy Cruiser _Admiral Hipper_, displacing 18,000 tons and built in flagrant disregard of the Washington Naval Treaty, was sunk in the harbour of Vigo in Spain by two corvettes. We are here to hear Jane Shepard tell us the details of the operation." They'd agreed on this to start things off…

A buzz of chatter immediately broke out in the room before Jane glared the Members of Parliament down coolly from the podium she had ascended, her glossy dark red hair tied up in a bun. "Honourable Members of the Canadian Parliament, during our operations in Spain, we received reports of the _Admiral Hipper_ involved in bombarding civilian targets along the northern coast of Spain, and salvaged records from the ship's sunken hull indicate that it was considered a gunnery exercise. Even though we did not know of this heinous war crime at the time, they were flagrantly shelling our men and the Republican forces as they advanced on Vigo to take the city. It was obvious that despite the treaty of non-interference by governments the cruiser was either in munity or had orders to interfere. So, figuring it to be some manner of hostile force, our forces were held up for several weeks by its artillery range, until our corvettes could cross the Atlantic and infiltrate the harbour. At the break of midnight on April First, the two corvettes entered the harbour and fired four torpedoes each, on approximate bearings of 90, which is due east, and 89 for the third and fourth torpedoes of each, at the large silhouette of the cruiser six kilometres away. The nationality was only fully ascertained once the torpedoes were already en route to their target, and it was determined that according to rules of engagement, we would not fire first, but if fired on, and our ground forces were, we would slug back if warranted. Considering that the _Admiral Hipper_ was known to have been commissioned at a displacement totally flaunting the Washington Naval Treaty, which was still in effect last year, and the aggressive actions of Germany over the past year, this blunt warning was justified. By militarizing the Rhineland, building up an army again, including tanks, and shouting about wanting living space when all the land in the world has already been claimed, Germany is on the road to war, and the only way to dissuade it is to hit it over the head hard enough to remind it that it is not the biggest fish out there. If Canada is not to be brought into another war thanks to Germany fighting France and Britain again, then we had to act, sinking one of the German Navy's newest and proudest warships, having only been in service two months, will warn them that there are those willing to stand up to and beat them again, and again, and AGAIN!" She thrust a fist up in the air with the final word to a great shout from her audience. "Germany, no, Hitler, is a schoolyard bully who wants to test his boundaries, like so many short men like Napoleon and others before him. He will sow terror, but only those who allow themselves to be frightened will feel fear, while the rest of us shall rise to the task of beating back such a tyrant, again and again until he is finished if need be! The schoolyard bully left unchecked by authorities will become the murdering rapist on the street, robbing banks and killing for sadistic pleasure. If the rest of the British Empire is too frightened by this schoolyard bully, we, the great, proud nation of Canada will stop him! Herr Hitler thinks he can scare us into withdrawing our forces so that Franco can win in Spain and help him hit France from two fronts at once? Herr Hitler wants to take everyone else's land and make it his 'living space' via the militarization Germany is undergoing right now? Let him try, and Canada will lead the rest of the world in showing him what it means to have the guts to fight him. We may not be as large a world power as some, but we can deal with his vaulting ambition. We can beat him down to size without going to war, by giving him a good stonewalling, we can curb his ambitions before they grow too large and the world suffers for the mad designs of one lunatic. By sending Herr Hitler a well-worded reply to his complaint about the _Admiral Hipper_, we will show him that we, Canada, as a people are NOT AFRAID OF HIM!"

The audience roared and stamped their feet in approval, since quite a number of them had met with Hannah or Jane in the past and been convinced. They had convinced others, and so it was that the audience gave her a standing ovation, stamping their feet in a crude rhythm for a few moments before going back to just clapping. Needless to say, they were quite approving of King's letter's wording, even if many asked it be harsher. The next day, after the Senate meeting, the message was sent to a fuming Hitler who ordered that work on the new German battleships be sped up and for more U-boats to be laid down. Unfortunately, the stiff response hadn't discouraged the mad dictator, but when later Jane's older sister understood this fact, Hannah would comment "Great, now I'll have a better reason to visit Berlin without seeing people going 'Heil Hitler!' all over the place."

* * *

><p><em>Spain, May 29, 1937<em>

The Nationalists were starting to get edgy, but they were still getting supplies through Portugal and had begun to muster more 37mm anti-tank guns, which could still puncture Shepard Industries APCs at point-blank range and of course destroy trucks. It is to be noted that the APC claim was disputable, the thing literally had to be driving right by in front of the gun's muzzle, and even then the shot had only killed one infantryman who'd been basically stabbed in the back by the warped armour from the armour-piercing shell. However a second hit in the same spot would have been able to smash through had the turret not swung around and, depressing its guns, mowed down the gun crew. That was while the APC turned away and fled at high speed to open up the range so that the thing would not stand a chance at penetrating. After all, tungsten-cored ammunition that would allow the 37mm gun to cleanly penetrate the armour at point blank range had yet to be invented, and even then, fighting a Light Tank would be a hopeless task. On the bright side, even the long 40mm guns of the vehicles themselves had a hard time penetrating an APC at more than muzzle-to-armour range.

What really brought the Nationalists relief were the large-calibre howitzers they were beginning to obtain, which had driven back a push by Republican troops. The SI Brigades had declared an offensive in the face of heavy artillery to be too risky without air support. The Republicans didn't have enough planes, nor were they the sort of quality desired by Hannah to support her forces by pre-emptively bombing heavy artillery to scrap before her Light Tanks rolled over the enemy in a tracked, armoured and armed wall of doom. Nothing other than an artillery gun or a ship gun had even a chance of penetrating her Light Tanks, so if she took out the artillery by bombing… the problem would be solved and she would be able to advance without unwarranted risk.

Logistics fees were very low while the army was simply moving about quelling uprisings, as the Republicans gladly supplied gasoline. Vehicular replacements and some reinforcements had gotten through when German blockaders had ceased activities against ships flying the Maple Leaf with Bars. That was after a submarine launched a torpedo at a Corvette, been dodged, and been torpedoed itself by the Corvette circling around at high speed and firing its bottom port tube, which ran at seven meters… periscope depth for a submarine's hull. They had sunk the sub before it could even see the attack coming, though it had accelerated, thinking it was going to be a ramming attempt. Periscopes were NOT the best tool for seeing the pencil wakes on the surface, especially for deep, fast-running torpedoes that left a small wake a long way behind the heavy device.

The oil slick and bits of fabric left floating on the surface of the water were the only traces that the sub and its crew had ever existed. It was, however, not as poor an idea for an attack as it might have seemed at first sight. The sub's torpedo had been set to run very shallow, and the corvette had been loaded down with 800 tons of supplies, increasing the draught from two metres to three. Besides, with the (rather expensive) magnetic proximity fuse on the torpedo (only initiated AFTER firing, and only for the one torpedo issued per sub with the device), even a miss going under the hull would have broke the little ship's back. It was almost ironic (literally) that the SI Corvette had a hull with 60mm of rolled homogeneous armour overall when the armour _belt_ of the late _Admiral Hipper_ had been a mere 70 to 80mm thick, considering the vast class and displacement discrepancy. But that is beside the point… The secondary setting of the SI torpedoes had proved itself effective against subs at periscope depth now, and that was a good thing, because with the breaking-up noises sonar picked up and the lack of a sonar contact, no depth charges were expended. Sure, torpedoes were far more expensive, but it had proven to work even against subs at periscope depth, which made it a forward-firing anti-sub weapon, which depth charges were NOT.

The Canadian public was, after some media work, in favour of waiting until adequate air support was available so that, according to King's summary of the editorials "Our boys don't go marching into their graves." The PM had commented that few seemed to yet grasp the true basis of fully motorized and mechanized warfare.

Hannah in the meantime had been conducting exercises and training for her men as usual, in addition to holding competitions and tournaments to keep their fitness up in games such as soccer, baseball, swimming and so on. It was cheap, didn't cost ammunition, and adequately took up the men's time and kept their minds off women and alcohol. At least, it would distract them until the female soldiers and the 1st Aviation Brigade, which had 2000 women and 2000 men, arrived, which was expected to begin July 1 or thereabouts in Northern Spain. Hannah didn't want to do matchmaking, but combat was a good way to see men's true colours and she had no doubt that after they all went home some of the troops would get married to others.

Unfortunately for Hannah's men's relaxation, she spent the next month, June, engaged in the southern parts of the country with areas she'd passed through earlier, but not completely pacified. Fortunately she had lectured the men on Guerrilla Warfare and they'd taken her lessons to heart, so were not sustaining much in terms of losses despite road-side bombs and landmines being used by the shrinking resistance forces. By June 25th the organized resistance movement had been crushed utterly into the dirt as far as she could see on a map. Driving over the last fleeing members may have been a little much, but they were already dead anyhow. It wasn't like they could feel their bottom halves being turned into red mulch under the grinding tracks of her vehicles… and the men buried the bodies and puddles anyways.

* * *

><p><em>Bilbao, July 1<em>_st__, 1937_

The port was for once totally clear of any and all blockaders due to the sinking of the only warships the Nationalists had by sneak attack in-harbour by, once again, corvette teams. They had been a Battlecruiser-type warship and a cruiser respectively, and the corvettes had made a clean getaway after the three of them fed eight torpedoes into the battle cruiser and four into the cruiser as they sat at anchor off the coast of Portugal at night. When the Republicans had lost the only battleship on THEIR side, however, Hannah had spent more than an entire week dictating strategic sense into the political leaders and hammering them into some semblance of functionality. The political rifts in the Republican faction had already started to seal up with her force arriving and hope helping fill in the gaps, but after ten days of being essentially beaten into cooperation…

Much to the relief of their subordinates, the top levels of the Republican government managed to learn how to compromise, cooperate, and coordinate their efforts, especially the purchase of anti-aircraft batteries for their cities' defences, since the Nationalists were still regularly launching terror raids via bombing. Needless to say, thanks to the non-interference policy by the League of Nations, the only factions willing to sell arms in bulk amounts to Republican Spain were the USSR and Shepard Industries. The latter was selling its A-WTC-40-75A anti-aircraft guns in profusion to Republican Spain at a reasonable but still highly profitable price and the former was selling fighter craft and heavier guns, as SI was determined not to allow its main "All-Purpose" aircraft to leak out before it could cease to be an embarrassment.

Hannah had sent the order for Second Division to begin an offensive east from Leon to take the pass south of Bilbao from behind as soon as she sighted the looming convoy approaching and identified them. The old Great War troopships were the transports Hannah had used, but by God were they crappy. These ones were four N-TT-1937As and a larger number of N-TF-1937As (Navy, Transport, Troop/Freight respectively, First Variant of Model first used in 1937). The former were troop transports each able to accommodate 4000 people in reasonable comfort on its five troop decks. The troops were housed in four-bunk rooms with some luggage space, one big bathroom per hallway, and a large mess hall for each deck, ventilation was good, so despite the portholes, where applicable, being strictly kept shut according to regulations, no one complained. 60mm of RHA made up the main hull, with anti-torpedo compartments all along it to absorb damage. Experimental torpedo skirts, 20mm steel boards, had also been installed, to be dropped into the water if a torpedo seemed unavoidable, to set off the blast early so it would not rupture the hull as badly. The skirt armour, mauled or not, could then be winched back up by the single small crane moving on a rail on each side of the 150-meter ship (spares were carried) and either left there if it was a near miss or replaced (the old one was stowed away for scrap metal) by the small crane's slow but functional work speed. Spares were also carried for the cranes, making the system somewhat weight-intensive, but if it kept the ship from being sunk, then everyone was all for it.

Minesweeping gear fitted onto the Corvettes' fronts for the mission proved quite useful as they detected several German mines and disposed of them via tossing long-fused grenades at them. The fuses on the 300g devices were so long that they could rest on the bottom near the mines—hard experience from Republican ships had taught them and their allies to avoid the mines in shallow water—and set them off that way, the spray forming a fountain up for a moment before fading. It had to be done this way, as standard gear wasn't working efficiently enough to be safe, and if the blast was anything to go by, it was at least a 300-kilogram payload involved here. Even the 450-kg depth charges Shepard Industries sold to customers all over the world (but only those allied with Canada) only loaded 360kg high explosive. That was an extreme hazard to vessels in shallow waters, and a Corvette had already been lost to one such mine.

The first all-purpose aircraft Shepard Industries had put together, 320 of which were arriving with the convoy, was acceptable but wholly inadequate for the title according to Hannah and Jane. According to everyone else it was a pretty damned good plane. Able to carry a 400-kg armour-piercing bomb or a 450kg depth charge fitted with parachute pod and still perform roughly similarly to a fighter, or not carry bombs and out-perform many fighter craft, the V-F-1937B (Air force, Fighter, second model of the general design first introduced in 1937) was equipped with the S-EA-125-1937A engine (Support System, Engine, Aircraft, 125x10=1250 horsepower, first model of type first introduced in 1937) and had six 12.5mm machine guns, two for the rear gunner and four fixed in the wings. With no drop tanks it could fly 1500 km, with drop tanks, which were typically brought back from missions to save resources, for Canada was not as economically powerful as the US and saving wherever possible was the way to go, it could manage 2500 km flying, completely safely. The take-off distance with the 2.25-ton 600mm torpedo was not good, in fact, if it had been testing off a ship, it would've made a big splash. Shepard Industries had initially refused to manufacture a smaller, lighter torpedo for a few simple reasons: It would be too weak to do one-hit kills easily on torpedo-worthy targets, and having a universal ammunition size, so that your escort carrier's aerial torpedoes can be used to replenish its escorts' stocks or fill its own launchers for example, was a good thing. There would need to be another, newer design later, for both AP Aircraft and torpedo, more specifically an aerial torpedo, which would likely be put at 1.2 tons maximum and be much shorter ranged than the 12 kilometres that the N-WT-600-2250A could manage at economy speed. The long range and efficiency of the 600mm torpedo had prompted the naval doctrine of Shepard Industries to include never steaming in a straight line (any ship without anti-torpedo skirts) for more than five minutes, but that was another story.

Still, for now, flying ground support, the V-F-1937Bs were more than enough and by far superior to anything anyone else in Spain had in the air in adequate numbers to fight them, if not in speed then at least in manoeuvrability and effective firepower. After all, slug size isn't everything, spitting enough that at least a few hit, that mattered, a LOT, in aerial combat. Hannah's new reinforcements were by now pulling up to the docks before huge steel ramps descended from the sides of the ships and caught onto the pier's pavement fairly smoothly. The ramps were sliding slightly on a curve, polished section with each sway of the ships as the first female soldiers ever to be organized in modern warfare descended the ramps in their vehicles from the cargo transports. These were mostly just drivers manning the vehicles as they moved to the main areas of the docks and picked up the river of women and a few men coming from the troop transports. A total of 1248 APCs, 813 LTs, 1515 Trucks (320 of which physically carried the aircraft, 1 on each) were unloaded from the large convoy, belonging to the 5th and 6th Motorized, 4th Mechanized, 2nd Light Tank and 1st Aviation Brigades of Shepard Industries. SI was also known colloquially as the Canadian Military, since they would mostly be that in peacetime and only assume SI identification in conflicts and conflict zones to avoid direct diplomatic incidents.

Bolstered by the additional forces, the ground elements of which were immediately titled Third Division, Hannah received news from Esling by the time she had the men and women fully organized and ready to move out. The battle for the pass had bogged down in the face of several artillery positions in commanding locations with good angles of fire coverage, and which could not be snuck up upon. Well, here was the first trial by fire for the aircrews, who had been trained for five months, starting mid-January with physical exercise and lots of theory, plus basic repair and maintenance on the prototypes. In February they'd begun flying off simple bulldozed runways on the dirt, using training aircraft, and by March had all graduated to flying the V-F-1937A. Thanks to their commentary, some changes had been made cumulating in the V-F-1937B which they had used for the last two months, mid-April to late June, of training and were now to fly into battle. They'd all clocked more than 500 hours flying time in the V-F-1937's, doing manoeuvres and practicing combat techniques.

The hardest thing for them to learn, even the few old veterans, had been the use of dive brakes in sharp yawing of the aircraft and the dive-bombing, but they'd duly learned the skills needed to do it and still come out fully stable. Now those skills would be put to the test as the Third Platoon, Second Company, fourth Battalion, First Aviation Brigade flew off from the airstrip of Bilbao after receiving maps, using their compasses and directions from ground radio stations, tracking signal strength to close in on target, and headed south. The four aircraft soon disappeared over the horizon as the convoy moved on toward the pass in question, as the four planes were instructed to head to and land at Leon's airport, it was after all the city Hannah would be headed to right after breaking through the pass. She would take some time for the men and women to mingle and get used to operating in a co-ed military. Oh, and the pilots would have to learn how to fight actual dogfights instead of the "intense" paint-bullet games they had in flight school. Rumour had it that Germany had brought new fighters in through Portugal to support the Nationalists with, and reinforced the much depleted Condor Legion with fresh ground units. She would look forward to crushing them like bugs.

After all, the V-F-1937B was more of a land plane than a carrier plane, so Hannah had every confidence that it could out-perform any aircraft available to the enemy, if not in all respects, then at least in overall combat efficiency. Over the next several days of operations in planning and preparing the Republicans for a great push through the entrenched Nationalist lines north of Valladolid, Hannah bore witness to the efficiency of her air groups.

The new Messerschmitt 109 fighters the Germans fielded had better speed and better firepower than her planes, but they were light and not as capable of staying stable in the air, or of absorbing punishment, as her F-1937Bs were. There was also the fact that her pilots consistently used their dive brakes to either decelerate hard, slipping to a side to shake a pursuer, or just yaw straight around their foes. That was in addition to the large control surfaces and decently sized wings of her craft, providing excellent lift despite not being too wide, and staying highly manoeuvrable. Thirteen of the All-Purpose planes were scrapped in the first week of fighting, though only two pilots perished, the rest having parachuted despite sometimes being injured. Her aircraft would typically tear through an enemy plane's wing with a good burst of 12.5mm machine gun fire, while they themselves could take a 20mm cannon shell in the wing and still stay flying (though three crews of five that got this type of hit had to bail out shortly afterward from more damage). The kill count however was a solid thirty-three enemy aircraft, mainly due to poor armour coverage and superior manoeuvrability on the part of her planes. However, there were a few innovations she observed off the destroyed hulks, and sent back notes and schematics on back to Jane in Canada where they were experimenting with new All-Purpose Aircraft.

Intel she'd gotten from Portugal said only one hundred Me109 aircraft had been shipped to the Nationalists. The information had come easy as after all, there were elements in the Portuguese government that wanted to befriend and purchase goods from Shepard Industries. However Hannah wasn't stupid, Portugal was a lot friendlier to Nazi Germany than a lot of other powers, notably Republican Spain, which hated the Nazis, so selling too many weapons to Portugal would just be asking for trouble. She had to keep a technological edge if her Private Military Company was to come out of the impending war alive, powerful, and influential. Selling gear to your enemy's friends… was not conductive to that objective.

She prepared during the month of July her three-pronged offensive, with the newly minted Major General Gunter von Esling leading the western offensive while she stabbed south with the First and Third divisions against the next stronghold of Valladolid. The 42nd Parallel Line as it was now termed would be punctured by a solution her troops were now quite familiar with: Diving. The Nationalists still had not figured out that her LTs and APCs were capable of diving, unsurprising considering the firing ports of the APCs seemed to preclude it.

Besides, this would be a good way to remind the French that their Maginot Line was, at best, a waste of money that could have gone into tank development. Hannah was strongly of the opinion that the best anti-tank weapons were surprise and/or, more importantly, a better tank. An air strike with long-ranged guided ammunition would also be extremely efficient at tank-killing, but unfortunately such ammunition had yet to be devised. The Maginot Line didn't extend under rivers or through dense forests, and it could be directly bypassed through the Low Countries or heavens forbid the Ardennes Forest. Experienced tank drivers in smaller vehicles could easily make the passage. In fact, Hannah was willing to gamble that her own units could manage the route without being blocked out by the trees, then launch a surprise attack into the rear of the French forces, rapidly cutting them off and rendering them combat-ineffective. Of course, there was no way she would be able to get Germany and France to agree to using their land with something on the order of over 7000 vehicles (the number total was 7736 in reality) and 52000 people without giving something in return i.e. the posting of observers. Personally, Hannah would prefer to keep her tactics to herself and merely have a nice chat with Daladier later about the possibilities of armoured columns bypassing the Maginot Line. Of course, whether the French would agree was another matter entirely, and Chamberlain in Britain, France's primary ally, was a bumbling buffoon who should not be in charge of the defence of himself, let alone of world peace.

Sure, the French had some of the best tanks in the world, even counting her own vehicles, but their tactics were so backward that they may as well have been cavemen slinging rocks at the German vehicles. Hannah would have liked to change that, and besides, with elevating tensions and the inadequacies of the French aeronautics industry, she believed it was entirely possible that a good demonstration of her aircraft, plus a subtle nudge, would allow her to get a contract of several thousand aircraft with France. Needless to say, they would be the F-1937B models, not later ones, since Hannah felt it too possible that some of the craft may be captured in the opening days of the war. The 1937Bs embodied no real new technologies, but they recombined most of the better modern technologies into a rugged, reliable, nimble and reasonably fast fighter-bomber that could fulfill every role conceivable. Trails using purchased American and British aerial torpedoes indicated that the craft were also very capable of performing torpedo bombing given a ground airfield to take off from and could even use torpedoes as dive-bombing weapons if need be. The only problem was that, like all other aircraft that could do it at all, it took a very long runway if loaded down with one of the 2.25 ton 600mm torpedoes Shepard Industries produced as a standard nowadays. The Americans had expressed some interest in the F-1937B, but deemed it too expensive and a bit too complex for their mass-production tastes. Hannah was hoping for a good contract with France after displaying their effectiveness against German technologies.

Of course, the current Me109 (Models A through D) only mounting an engine with little more than half the S-EA-125-1937A's 1250 horsepower output helped greatly. But that was beside the point as her 320 aircraft—13 of which had been assembled out of spare parts originally intended for field repair and manned by several "spare" crews—soared overhead in orderly echelons. They were using the original airstrip at Leon in addition to several roughly pounded-out airstrips just south of the city, pounded out by rolling staggered armoured vehicles in formation over the dirt to crush it down into a functional surface. As the aircraft moved over the ground forces, some of which were still submerged, only their snorkels, painted midnight blue, visible over the surfaces of the rivers they were using, most began to dive steeply while 80 of them, loaded out with extra machine-gun ammunition as opposed to a 400-kg bomb, circled overhead, on the alert for enemy interceptors.

However, they were the only ones shattering the peace as the first 400-kg armour-piercing bombs impacted and detonated in unmanned AAA positions on the Line. The second groups of bombs set off absolute chaos among the artillery positions and forward barracks buildings where men were just waking up. It was a classic coordinated night-time attack, begun at 0400 hours, the first bombs hitting the ground at 0401 on August 3rd, 1937 and the first armoured columns smashing their way out of the covert gathering areas by the rivers as soon as they saw the explosions in the night. The Nationalists had begun to grow slightly complacent from the long time without activity, and they paid for it as armoured vehicles rolled over their trenches and penetrated into their rear echelons. Tanks and APCs were crunching out a path for the trucks that followed and mowing down the enemy infantry before they could do much. The few grenades that were thrown bounced off the armour plating and had no effect, even on the trucks, thanks to the drivers swerving away enough from the blasts that their vehicles' limited armour shook off the fragments. That was except for the unluckiest ones, which were disabled, typically by a blast to the undercarriage and transmission, and used as bunkers by the men inside. The Nationalists might have been conducting offensives in the south that Hannah was not reacting to and the Republicans were struggling to contain, but it had been all quiet on the northern front for quite some time.

Exemplifying the speed and power of armoured assaults, the twelve brigades of ground forces penetrated into enemy lines and charged south, rolling over or shooting up/down (in the case of aircraft) any targets in their way as they barrelled southward. The steel rivers bypassed enemy strongholds too strong for them, leaving them for Republican infantry to mop up later as they blazed their way south into Republican territory. The three Divisions mingled and recombined as they proceeded south in a general attack, according to Flexible Organization Doctrine's basic rules. The men of the Shepard Industries Brigades, already respectful of women, gained even more respect as they fought shoulder to shoulder through urban environments. After all, there was no bonding experience better than camaraderie under fire.

By noon the assault had died down to nothing as a siege circle was put up around Salamanca and Republican troops established a line behind the Nationalist defences facing south, having occupied effectively all their territory and destroyed their capacity to make war. The SI Brigades took some time to take a nap in the lull in the fighting, posting guards for now. By the next morning preparations had been made for the final push on Salamanca, but for one minor Problem…

* * *

><p><em>Paris, August 7, 1937<em>

"WHAT?" Hannah Shepard had roared as she slammed the telegram down on the desk "Gunter, you take charge, I'm headed to Paris for a conference… King had better have a good explanation for this…"

She had arrived near Paris three days later, moving at economy speeds and issuing the following order to her "meagre" forces "Form up in Parade formation, unload and engage safeties on all weapons, but keep ammunition ready to be loaded and stay on the alert."

She left the troops outside and went in for a private meeting with Daladier and King. She was introduced by King "This is the Shepard Industries representative, Hannah Shepard. She was the one who originally persuaded me that Germany was a real threat." After handshakes and greetings King popped the question. "Will you be willing to allow us to ride in your armoured vehicles to the negotiation halls as a subtle gesture of intimidation?"

The answer was one word "Yes."

Then Daladier began talking to Hannah in earnest "It is good to see another who understands that Hitler's ambitions go far beyond what Chamberlain thinks."

"Chamberlain is a fool who is unable to defend himself, let alone of world peace." Hannah remarked derisively. "Germany wants to make territorial gains so it can obtain the resources it needs to fight the West. I'm betting it has eyes on Poland and Romania, and probably the Middle East as well."

"You have surprising insight, Miss Shepard…"

"Of course, Shepard Industries personnel are taught to think strategically."

"Perhaps I could persuade the War Department to spend some money on buying some of your products to equip our army." Daladier pondered. "They seem to be of excellent quality and reliably beat back German counterparts in crushing victories."

"It will be hard to convince the generals, Monsieur Daladier, they are always fighting the last war, especially those who won it."

"Aye, Miss Shepard, but perhaps I can find a way…"

* * *

><p><em>Paris, August 8, 1937<em>

At 1200 hours, singing the International, the 975 men and women (the forces had recombined) rolled into the city at a very low speed and gear. Awed crowds, having gathered for the World Expo, but now utterly distracted, watched as the First Battalion of the First Light Tank Brigade of Shepard Industries rolled into the city in synchronized ranks. The column stopped in front of the _Arc de Triomphe_, arrayed in formation by companies and guns elevated high into the air.

Hitler's translator spoke for him "Most impressive, Mr. King."

Mackenzie King inclined his head slightly "Indeed, Herr Hitler, these are soldiers trained and equipped by Shepard Industries, a government-subsidized Private Military Company operating out of Canada. Their entourage is approaching us even now." He gestured to Hannah and her entourage, who were walking toward where he, Hitler and Daladier were standing.

Hitler made a remark almost at the same time as Daladier, who said in decent English "Well, I heard that Shepard Industries fielded female troops, it's interesting to see them here. With the sort of efficiency and vehicles they display, you seem to have been right to subsidize them. I also hear that the company has basically bailed out your economy…"

When Hitler was translated, after Daladier was done, it came to "I am surprised that you would subsidize a Private Military Company, let alone one that had women as soldiers."

King snorted before looking to Hannah as reporter cameras went off with countless flashes "Heh, do you think this would be a good time to…"

"The General said not to reveal their identity Mr. King." Hannah stated bluntly, shaking King's hand, then Daladier's, Hitler's translator's, and finally Hitler's, putting enough strength in to nearly crush the small man's hand.

King shrugged "Well then we won't, I assume you will be the speaker?"

Hannah nodded simply, watching Hitler with seeming disinterest yet internally remarking that this was the most hideous man she'd seen in a long time "Yes, Mr. King."

"Great, let us proceed to the French Parliament." King stated. Daladier and Hitler agreed, but it was found that apparently two of the cars had broken down conveniently. "Can we hitch a ride?" King and Daladier asked Hannah, who was standing up in the turret cupola of an APC that was driving along next to the cars.

"Certainly, Mr. King, Monsieur Daladier." Hannah inclined her head slightly before speaking into her intercom microphone "Men, unlock and open the rear doors." The heavy (60mm) angled rear armour plates of the APC opened hydraulically as the men inside hit the relevant buttons to unbar/unlock them, then the button to open the doors. There were many safety features and back-up controls involved with opening the doors, but that is another story…

The two infantrymen inside shifted closer to the front to make more room for the heads of state, while Hannah stated over the intercom that Daladier could bring two of his bodyguards if he wanted, as the vehicle's passenger compartment was designed to fit six fully-armed troops comfortably. That meant it could fit eight politician-type men loosely. Daladier did as she suggested and brought two bodyguards and found the vehicle still fairly spacious, though he had to be a little careful with standing up too straight. "Very comfortably engineered, Miss Shepard, suspension system seems quite good too, but how is the rest of this machine?"

"Indeed, the ergonomics were designed for troops to be comfortable." Hannah said over the intercom before popping back through the 1-cm bulkhead after the thump of the cupola closing being heard even behind the bulkhead. "However, this vehicle is also well-armed, with one 40mm cannon and two 12.5 mm machine-guns, and yes, Monsieur Daladier, we designed our gear in metric."

Daladier watched Hannah for a long moment as they rolled through the streets with the humming of the 800 horsepower V12 engine in the background. "You own Shepard Industries, don't you?"

"Yes, please have your guards sworn to secrecy, Monsieur. It is too risky right now to reveal my gender." Hannah stated simply.

"I understand, Miss Shepard. They will keep their mouths shut." Daladier glared at his guards for just a moment to enforce the point. As he looked at the woman standing in the doorway in the bulkhead, he could see beside her in the "turret shaft" containers holding clips of ammunition in clipped slots (even if the vehicle rolled sideways they wouldn't come loose) for the cannon and boxes of rounds for the heavy machine guns. "I am still interested in your aircraft, however, and plan to look into the topic if I can persuade the military. Your reputation for fast delivery will be nice to have on my side in facing down Hitler…"

Hannah smirked "Don't worry, Prime Minister, there are two major powers that I worry about, Nazi Germany and the USSR. Socialism is impossible without democracy, by definition, so… they are embarrassments to the term 'socialism', and are dictatorships by men seeking absolute power and who want to take over the world. Bullies must be stood up to." She extended a hand and shook Daladier's firmly as they nodded together.

"Agreed, Miss Shepard, we can negotiate this more at a later date…"

"Aye, Monsieur…" a few minutes later the vehicle stopped relatively smoothly "We're here, Prime Minister. Let's move."

The APC seemed almost comically large, parked next to the Volkswagen Hitler had brought, the two Prime Ministers noted as the politicians disembarked from it. "Let us proceed, Herr Hitler." King stated before they entered the conference room and the secretaries began to take notes of the conference date and such.

Daladier opened the conference with "This is a formal conference between Canada and Germany on April the eighth, nineteen-thirty-seven, beginning at 2 PM, to discuss the progress of the Spanish Civil War and the impending victory of the Republican faction. On the Canadian side we have Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King representing the Canadian Government and Hannah Shepard representing Shepard Industries, a government-subsidized Private Military Company being paid to assist the Republican faction of Spain. On the German Side we have Chancellor Adolf Hitler directly representing the interests of the German Government. I, Eduard Daladier, am present on behalf of the French Government to mediate talks. Germany, please present your arguments." Daladier nodded to Hitler at that, making it rather obvious what he meant.

Once his translator confirmed Daladier's words, Hitler immediately launched into a speech, pausing once in a while to let his translator convey his message. "Germany demands that the forces of Shepard Industries immediately cease hostilities against the German men of the Condor Legion and Krieg-marine. These attacks are totally unwarranted and present a major barrier to good relations between our two nations. We also demand a retreat of all Shepard Industries forces from Spain as a consequence on the League of Nations' ban on foreign and stateless volunteers. As a final note, if your Canadians kill any more Germans in Spain then a formal state of undeclared war will be assumed between us."

King glared at Hitler icily before turning to the woman sitting next to him "Hannah, run him over the grill."

"Yes sir." Hannah Shepard turned toward Hitler with an utterly impassive gaze, as if he was beneath her notice, knowing it would anger the dictator into doing something dumb. "I'm sorry, am I hearing you right? Your men shot at, shelled and killed the soldiers of Shepard Industries without warning or declaration of hostilities, then we fired back blindly at the enemy. It is no fault of ours that your forces like to occupy the same area of land as the Nationalists or tend to lead their charges, we merely assumed them to be Nationalists and shot them as we were paid to do. That brings me to the second point, what about being paid to fight makes us volunteers? We were practically the very opposite of volunteers, being a Private Military Company, even subsidized, makes us merely mercenaries with a primary commitment. Mercenaries are not banned by the League of Nations, so long as they are not volunteering to do the job. Third, about your threat of war, Herr Hitler, I dare you to try it." She smirked evilly, knowing that all negotiations would come to nought and Hitler would leave frustrated and not at war with Canada. The alternative was that he would not leave at all. She had a battalion's worth of aircraft on rented airstrips near Paris, and they could take off at a moment's notice, combined with the armoured might of the Light Tank Battalion, well… She suspected Daladier would complain but not severely if they "accidentally" ran Hitler's Volkswagen, with him inside, over with an APC or Light Tank. It would also take long enough for the Germans to mobilize that she could run her entire force up here, buy petrol and ethanol from Daladier and then smash through several provinces' worth of Germany before an organized force large enough to fight her to a standstill was assembled.

"Do not think that the German People fear you, our army is orders of magnitude larger than yours, and our industrial base far superior." The translator, an average-aged army officer by the name of Erwin Rommel, told Hannah and King.

"Superior at what, at cranking out cardboard 'tanks'? You are bluffing, Herr Hitler, victory is beyond your grasp as far as the moon, and so you bluff… Stop it. Give up the Spanish venture, get your Condor Legion ready to evacuate, I'll negotiate with the Republicans about transporting the men, and only the men and enough of their food and water supplies, away from Salamanca if you do that. Otherwise it will be ground to dust along with the remaining troops of the Nationalists, heaven knows that its war crimes more than warrant annihilation." She stated lightly, calmly, as if she were talking about cute fluffy kittens instead of world peace and the lives of thousands of men.

Daladier was, instead of mediating talks, merely sitting back and watching in satisfaction as Hitler seemed to grow angrier and angrier, not unlike a spoilt child, over the next fifty minutes. Eventually he spoke before it turned into half a shouting match (Hitler's half) "Herr Hitler, I suggest you acquiesce, the deal is already sweet enough. After all, she didn't start attacking Salamanca before coming to this conference."

"I suggest we adjourn this conference until tomorrow." Rommel stated for his Fuhrer.

Hannah shrugged lightly "Well then the deal's off, just to tell you. We will not declare war unless you declare war upon us. However, don't expect to get your Condor Legion back if you do not agree to our demands today."

Hitler growled something in German, sounding raw, hush and guttural, which Rommel translated as "We need time to think, and would like to retire for the day."

King interjected "Very well, Herr Hitler." Once Hitler, Rommel and their bodyguards left, he turned to Hannah "I'm authorizing the plans for Operation: Hail that you presented me with yesterday. Do not, however, execute Stage Two unless Germany declares war on us."

Daladier sighed and switched to English once the room emptied of all others, leaning in close to talk in hushed tones "You are wise, Hannah Shepard, to have anticipated his demands and desires so… and to threaten to engage Germany in a war it is not adequately prepared for."

Hannah shrugged and replied in a whisper "It's the only way I can guarantee a fast, inexpensive war to cast down a soon-to-be tyrant who has vaulting ambition. I need to get to my troops. Talk to you guys later."

* * *

><p><em>Two minutes later… Outside the building, Paris, August 8, 1937<em>

"66.6 MHz… nice Miss Shepard, nice…" King stated with a grin as he watched Hannah turn the radio knob to her Supreme Command Channel. The two Prime Ministers had followed her outside to watch her do her thing.

She ignored him and Daladier for now "To all units, to all units, this is General Shepard, this is General Shepard, activate Stage One of Operation: Hail, repeat, activate Stage One of Operation: Hail, authorization code…" She rattled off a string of words and numbers, then repeated them. Usually this wasn't used in SI operations, but major operations did have authorization codes. "Activate Stage One effective immediately, repeat, effective immediately."

* * *

><p>AN: I couldn't understand how I could make a strategic genius like Hannah wait for months for no really good reason other than to prove women can fight just as well as men can, until I figured out a good reason to justify it. Politics and interpersonal skills aren't my forte, but I think it's plausible to delay for the reason of giving Republican Spain more national pride, wearing down the Nationalists, and taking time to personally hammer the Republican government into working properly…

REVIEW!


	7. Let the Wind and the Rain and the Hail…

A/N: We're coming up to the end of the Spanish Civil War and about to go into 1938. Now, with so many political events looming…

Btw I found a mistake I made, the gasoline tank for the vehicles (APCs and LTs) needs to be much bigger, or we're looking at 238 hp according to the fuel endurance I gave, not 800, so let us increase the gas tank to 500 from 200 to give 596 hp economy output of power, obviously, not all of it is put into powering the vehicle's tracks, as internal lighting is quite good, the radio and other electronics also demand power. Still, let's change the fuel canisters carry-able to the correct corresponding numbers: up to 1000-1200 litres worth of gas canisters. It has been edited to make sense.

God-Mod Syndrome actually explained next chapter.

* * *

><p>Chapter 7: Let the Wind and the Rain and the Hail Blow High…<p>

_Near Salamanca, circa 1500 hours, August 8, 1937_

540 men and women, forming 270 aircrews for the two-person F-1937Bs, scrambled to their briefing rooms where they received final attack targets and instructions as the loudspeakers in their field airbases sounded assembly. Land vehicle crews performed final check-ups on their vehicles and went to DEFCON (Defence Condition) 2, which meant imminent strategic offensive, be it enemy or friendly. DEFCON 3 was the level that authorized conventional land, sea and air warfare, and they had been at it as long as they were in Spain. Now the men were highly alert and ready to move, but waited, chewing on snacks to ensure they had enough energy as they listened to the aircraft take off one after another, form up, and the drone of the engines fading into the distance toward Salamanca.

Republican formations, manning Soviet T-26s and their own trucks, waited, tense at the sudden activity of their allies, and similarly prepared for a major offensive. Artillery had started firing en masse in suppressive fire as soon as the message came from General Shepard to begin Stage One of Operation: Hail. 100mm pieces, now including towed weapons, fired off a steady pounding rain of shells at strategic points in the Nationalist city. The huge ammunition reserves built up over the past week were serving their purpose as the guns kept firing until the planes were nearly over the target, and then stopped, as this way the howitzers would not hit friendly fliers. After confirmations were received from the three battalions of aircraft that they were out of the immediate airspace over the city, the Artillery Channel got clearance to continue fire, and soon they were again raining down ten shells a minute per gun at rapid fire into the hostile city.

The armoured columns had begun moving closer as soon as word was received from the commander, and were now in position for a charge into the city, and employing their close support mortars to extreme effect against barricades set up by the Nationalists. 40mm cannon sniping from long range took out most visible gun nests less than a minute before the armoured columns boiled toward the city. All the LTs and APCs were firing on the move thanks to their good weapon stabilizers, though they were still rather inaccurate, rate of fire and the power of high explosive slugs made a difference. One LT blew up in a catastrophic kill when it was slammed by what was likely the only 8-inch artillery gun the Nationalists had left in the assault zone, hidden inside a building and firing out through a doorway. The report, the flash, and the puff of smoke attracted enough attention that the bottom floor of the building in question came under fire from no fewer than fifteen 40mm guns and soon went down pancake style as the bottom floor was torn to pieces. That was right before the stored shells got lit off and the whole building flew up and apart. Even as the warped, blown-out turret of the T-1936A landed, upside-down, on the wrecked hull, the armoured column boiled by around it, hell-bent on vengeance as they blasted any weapon-like thing that moved or shot at them mercilessly, destroying anti-tank gun after anti-tank gun before they could get a surprise kill, and blowing apart and/or grinding every Nationalist soldier they came across under their tracks who did not immediately surrender. No mercy, however, was shown to members of the Condor Legion, the fact that they didn't like to surrender helped in that respect.

* * *

><p><em>1000 hours, Paris, August 9, 1937<em>

"This is a travesty!" Rommel declared, translating. "You launched an attack on Salamanca while we were still talking."

Hannah shrugged impassively "Wrong, the operation began after our conference ended, in fact, the main assault was a full hour after our discussion ended with your refusal to immediately withdraw your by now non-existent Condor Legion. Since you stubbornly refused our generous offer, we withdrew it and resumed operations that would have been completed days ago had you not interfered. You wanted us to stop killing your men but you refused to get them out of harm's way. Therefore it is not our fault if they suffer casualties as a result of being armed and in action in a combat zone. Remember, Herr Hitler, he who plays with fire gets burned."

"This discussion is pointless, we are leaving." That was Hitler's reply. The man's mind, however, was churning with thoughts of _Ratifying a fait accompli is so much easier than talking about doing it… That is a lesson I must learn. Perhaps Austria can be absorbed that way._

"Please stay for another day or two, Herr Hitler, we need to discuss allegations that German units have been attacking civilians in Spain." Daladier stated politely, having been filled in on the details of Operation: Hail.

"Two days, I will allow two days for that woman to throw her ridiculous allegations at me instead of staying at home where she belongs, taking care of her children." Hitler replied through Rommel.

* * *

><p><em>August 11, 1937<em>

It was now the third day of gruelling street-to-street, house-to-house, room-to-room combat in Salamanca, and victory was finally in sight as Franco's residence was besieged. The fight went on until the defenders surrendered, the Generalissimo having shot himself to avoid capture. Nationalist forces, those that remained, laid down their arms at last all over Spain. The Spanish Civil War was over.

The battle had only lasted so long because First and Third Divisions had hurriedly run off to the east during the first night after the breakthroughs into the city had been consolidated, their positions filled by the now more stretched-out Second Division. Even 1st Aviation's land vehicles had gone with them, leaving the planes with only local stocks of 400-kg armour-piercing bombs to dive-bomb with, which had been expended as of the dawn of the third day. Second Division participated in the rescue of people still trapped in the rubble of destroyed buildings, while preparing to roll west should the word be received through the relay of radio towers that now dotted Spain. After all, Shepard Industries had rights to the 66.6 MHz channel through them, thanks to a minor clause included when the towers were being put up in the past months.

By sundown of the ninth day of August, First and Third Divisions were on trains in France and headed toward the German border at the best speed the trains could manage. The trucks and most of the APCs were making their own way eastward because there simply hadn't been enough trains available for the move, and by using the French highway network they could move in larger volumes anyways. It was after all a 900-kilometer cross-country dash, and at economy speeds it would take the vehicles at least 25 hours to arrive. Accounting for driver changes every five hours of driving and two fuel stops along the way, plus several hundred kilometres added due to not running through farmland, it took until late afternoon on the eleventh day to fully assemble all the units near the German border. There they waited, for the signal and clearance codes to begin the second stage of Operation: Hail. The First Division, currently under Major General Gunter von Esling was in position south of Metz and Third Division was many kilometres away to the southeast, just north of Strasbourg, their snorkels ready to be deployed to swim the Rhine at a moment's notice. Hannah had decided not to risk the Ardennes without giving herself time to chart it first. Regardless, First Division was more or less astride the tracks that Hitler would be heading home by, their 2000-plus vehicles littered across the terrain in loose but functional formation, loosening the further they were from the tracks to give the impression that they stretched to the horizon, though many of the further ones from the tracks were cardboard "tanks" (as per the plan) sitting on the ground among the real vehicles. Engines were turned off all over the formation, and men snacked, napped or otherwise waited, chatting to each other by poking their heads out of their cupolas, for the Fuhrer's train to approach.

* * *

><p><em>Paris, August 11, 1937<em>

"The Reich will not pay a cent, our formal apology should be enough." Hitler stated through Rommel. The negotiations had taken over a day to pound Hitler into admitting that sending the Condor Legion was incorrect and that it was either a German Government force or volunteers as they were not technically a separate mercenary organization. The Condor Legion was therefore against the standing ruling by the League of Nations and thus it was illegal for the unit to be in Spain.

"Fine, Herr Hitler, go back home, reconsider." Hannah replied lightly. The "negotiations" had done their job anyways, bought enough time for her units to redeploy themselves. Second Division would, should the initial strike on Germany (Option Two of Stage Two of Operation: Hail) bog down for whatever reason—with three Armies from France supporting them it shouldn't—deliver a declaration of war from Canada to Portugal and start shooting five minutes after the message was delivered. U-boats were simply too dangerous to allow to take their toll if the war began to drag on. Even with her escorts and new freighter designs, air escort was the most critical thing to consider. The Azores, owned by Portugal (but not if that country was rapidly conquered as Second Division could pull off) were perfect to cover convoys. An airbase would be ideal for the westernmost islands and one of the easternmost ones, and a naval base would need to be built somewhere in the islands. Sure, her ships were higher-speed than even fast merchantmen thanks to high horsepower, efficient oil-fired engines that used a very large air-to-fuel ratio to achieve cleaner burning, and had efficient propeller designs, but time outside of air cover was still hazardous in her opinion.

That being said, it would be best if they could avoid armed conflict completely, despite Daladier having agreed to pay them for the job handsomely. Shepard Industries needed a good reputation, and the Spanish Civil War had cast it as a defender of democracy and producer of tip-of-the-spear quality weapons. Fighting the Fascist nations directly on the other hand was not good for its reputation. She didn't like them—as evidenced by her wisely turning down Mussolini's offer of hiring her forces to pacify Ethiopia—but right now international opinion of them wasn't so bad that smashing her way through one of them would earn cheers and contracts.

In terms of business, her deal with the Canadian government was going swimmingly—she had after all researched and found Canada had lots of extra treasury funds that it was trying to figure out how to inject into the economy—and she was getting more contracts with the US. Her A-WBR-7.5-110A, which was the 1937 version of the Battle Rifle concept, was earning acclaim from all over the world with its sheer reliability, innovative configuration (the clip was behind the handle with trigger, and the recoil mechanism was wrap-around to the chamber), practical size and acceptable pricing. The fact that she had only suffered a monetary loss from outfitting her troops with vehicles didn't actually put as much a dent into her budget as she'd feared. Sales of the V12 800hp engine were fine, thanks to the fact that it was compact relative to many V16 engines and was very fuel-efficient for its power rating (notably, it did not run at maximum power when travelling at economy speed).

Regardless, now was a time for military/political operations, and Hannah watched Daladier phone the border guards to instruct them not to immediately raise the block on the rail inspection gate between France and Germany that Hitler was sure to be using. It was after all a direct line from Paris to Berlin… Hitler's train was scheduled to leave at 6 AM, and her troops already in their positions even as they spoke, excellent. It was 9 PM, so Hannah could be sure to arrive at the border before Hitler, even though the Fuhrer had already sent a message to the train engineers that he wanted them to move at a scenic speed. Hannah had obtained this piece of information through spies she'd stationed at the railway station where the train was parked. Actually, they were stationed on the ROOF of the station doing, ostensibly, repairs on the roof, an act made all the more convincing by the soldiers in question actually having been roof repair men once, but that was beside the point. Hannah and King took her First Battalion troops of First Light Tank and headed eastward with Daladier tagging along to spectate. They managed to make the trip in the night, King and Daladier dozing for a while, Hannah only catnapping before returning to handling her forces' paperwork, at least, what paperwork that could only be done by her.

Of course, before dozing, King asked a question he'd been thinking of for some time "Why did your report not contain your corvettes shelling Vigo back when you sank the _Hipper_?"

Hannah blinked once "I thought it was rather obvious that they did do some shelling, but they had to get out before they could be engaged by shore batteries. After all, what do you think they were doing while rescuing German sailors from the water."

"Oh… right."

At 8 AM the next morning the lookouts reported that the recon trucks hidden in copses of trees had seen Hitler's train approaching, and it was very visible thanks to the swastikas. Hannah immediately took up her position in a Light Tank in the second column away from the tracks, standing in the cupola. King and Daladier were in the APCs right behind her watching proceedings through the periscopes and listening through the open cupolas that the commanders of the vehicles were standing in. As the soft vibration and rumbling of the train approached, Hannah began smirking, twisting to look at the train as it rolled relatively slowly over the landscape.

Hitler, in his private train, was done ranting about the inferiority of "that whore" and her people as a whole and was sitting there, brooding while looking at the scenery, scenery that would someday belong to and only to the Third Reich and himself. Needless to say, he almost didn't believe his eyes when, on turning his head to look toward the front of the train (he was facing back, glaring at the back wall and Paris, a city he would conquer someday) at Rommel's gasp, he saw a large number of stark-white shapes approaching his train. The train was moving relatively slowly over the tracks, but Hitler never remembered so many white bricks or cottages near the tracks… only when they got closer, partly thanks to Rommel giving his Fuhrer his binoculars, did Hitler realize what they were.

Armoured column upon armoured column of bone-white battle-ready vehicles, most with cupolas sealed, were arrayed facing toward Germany, ready to move out at a moment's notice. As his train entered the formation and the white shapes seemed to litter the land to the horizon, a quiet rumble outside, the sound of thousands of petrol-powered (though they could burn diesel with some setting changes) engines starting up at once—the silencing was good, but a few thousand put together at close range still produced noise—sounded. The vehicles began to recede past his windows slower and slower until they were keeping pace, at 36 km/h, with his train. The ranks had timed the accelerations as ordered by Hannah and it was perfect as the elder co-founder and co-owner of Shepard Industries waved to a gaping Hitler and Rommel as they moved parallel to one another. "Are you considering accepting our demands of payment for our losses and those of Republican Spain now, Herr Hitler? Twenty Million British Pounds to Shepard Industries and Eighty Million to the people of Spain? It is a pretty low price for what your armed forces did after all…" Hannah shouted at the open train window the two Nazis were gaping from, and Rommel translated.

* * *

><p>AN: This isn't much, only 8 Carriers or so of cash total, Iraq after the Gulf War had to pay 400 billion USD in reparations, and that's roughly 300 Nimitz-class Carriers' build cost worth of cash. Accounting for inflation between the carriers and war, let's say that's 150 carriers. Hannah is not demanding that much in comparison

* * *

><p>Hitler tensed, but knew he had lost. <em>If only I had armoured columns like those… Guderian is going to get all the funding he could want from the moment I get back to Berlin onward…<em> Through Rommel he replied "Yes, yes, I'm ordering the train to stop now." And the train decelerated before coming to a stop on the tracks. Hannah emerged with the agreement files and held them out to Hitler, who read over the simple agreement and signed before the three other major political figures present also signed. Daladier, King and Rommel served as witnesses for this transaction.

With the agreement signed, and thus Conclusion One of Operation: Hail accomplished (Two was to immediately attack Germany), Hannah turned her army back and let Hitler's train go ahead, chugging along as fast as it could. Apparently the Fuhrer didn't like such bad memories… After packing up the collapsible cardboard "Tanks" she had put up, she and King headed back to Paris where they were treated to the very best hotel available by Daladier. Hannah questioned this as they signed in "Why are you doing this, Prime Minister?"

Daladier chuckled "Herr Hitler's face was priceless when he was dealing with you, I didn't know the human face could contort like his did. You averted what could have been a war and showed him not everyone, though my Senate is an exception, is going to always appease him. That is more than worth the bill for all the fuel your vehicles burnt and the hiring fee for your troops. You helped preserve world peace, Hannah Shepard, and we'll be ordering a lot of gear from you sometime likely in the near future, so paying you well doesn't hurt, see?"

The black-haired woman smirked "You're a businessman, Prime Minister, I like that. Maybe one day in a decadent environment won't hurt after nearly eight months of sleeping in an armoured vehicle, drinking from its fresh water tank…"

"What's it like to be a mobile fighting force?" Daladier asked, as they entered Hannah's new suite's private meeting room, typical of ambassadorial suites.

"The men haven't got that much to do most of the time, but they don't complain much, it's better than being out on the street looking for work or standing, dirty-faced and dressed in rags, in a bread line. The rations are made to supply the men with all the nutrients they need to stay healthy and contain a good variety of foods, and the fresh water tanks are always kept clean by the vehicle crews, always. Besides, we're on the move and in the wilderness enough that the men can't even get close to a whorehouse, so the disease problem is done. We also stock lots of bars of soap in the logistics supply, at least two spare bars per vehicle, and the men are required to bathe at least once per three days in summer and whenever we arrive in a town or city with hot water in winter. Of course, in winter radiator water showers are quite popular, since the artillery trucks are fitted to drain off water, and with the top and bottom slats closed twenty men can comfortably fit inside and enjoy the warmth. It's actually very easy to jury-rig nearby APCs and tanks to route the hot water from a running engine's coolant system in and mix it with cold water obtained from melted snow. Of course, you need to seal up the radiator vents on the vehicles, keep an eye on water temperature, and keep a large amount of snow feeding into the intake pipes to maintain the output without endangering the engine. Radiator showers only happen if we're in the wilderness for more than five days, but they work after a fashion and we can handle a lot of people at once after manhandling the disassembled artillery pieces off their vehicles." The artillery and mortar trucks needed drainage systems to not get swamped when fighting in the rain, so the result was that the men would get themselves wet, lather up with soap and then rinse off using the hoses they got leading to the idling vehicles outside. There were enough artillery and mortar trucks that three rotations were enough for everyone to be cleaned up. Obviously, despite co-ed units and bunking arrangements (when on the move) bathing was not a co-ed activity, and Hannah had private showers, though she still had to use a truck as APCs and LTs did not have drainage systems other than bilge pumps, thanks to the fact that open pipes wouldn't be too good for diving.

"Ah, sounds like a rather hard life." Daladier commented "Odd that you would be so crude in your speech, but please elaborate a bit…"

Hannah scoffed at that "I'm realistic, soldiers tend to whore around, especially in a risky military, which mine is not. Most of the time we're close enough to a town that even though the men can't use bars or whores, but we're able to go in for bathing regularly. The vehicles all have some insulation on the inside, so staying warm isn't a problem even in winter when the men huddle in their vehicles for warmth despite their heavy winter uniforms. There are blankets and such in every man's pack, hence they typically can sleep in their vehicles, which they do."

"You offer a very unique and interesting perspective, Miss Shepard, but I'm afraid I must be off, I look forward to talking business with you via telegrams… if I can persuade the military that your way of fighting is superior."

"Good luck, Prime Minister." Hannah stated, shaking Daladier's hand.

"I'll need it." He stated with a smile as he shook her hand firmly, feeling strength and power behind her seemingly delicate grasp and getting the impression that she could crush his hand like crumpling a piece of paper if she wanted to. Then he shook hands with King "I don't know how you got such a genius in your country, but you sir are one lucky man."

"I know it." King stated.

"I look forward to communicating with you two again… damn it, I'm gonna be late for that conference if I don't leave soon… goodbye!"

After their goodbyes, Hannah and King kicked back to relax a bit "You did well, Hannah Shepard, and I'm proud to be the Prime Minister of the country you were born in." King stated, looking at her tiredly.

She chuckled and shook her head, her black hair, in a slightly wavy sheet stretching to just under her shoulder blades, swishing softly against her rather manly clothes "I'm proud of being born in Canada, a country with enough foresight to accept me and my sister's suggestions. However, I do doubt that Herr Hitler understands yet that he isn't even close to being the biggest fish in the pond, that title belongs to the USA or USSR."

"Maybe it'll come to a war after all, but you've roused Daladier's fighting spirit, and that man has been in office as many times as me. He's too stubborn to give up the good fight once he embarks upon it. At least now we'll be sure to have another ally on our side when the fighting breaks out."

"That's true, anyhow, sir, it's good to see you again, but I must ask, how's the economy doing these days?"

"Much better, the Prairies are recovering despite the dust coming up from the US, with the new environmentally friendly concepts your sister developed, and the shipyards and their supporting industries have created tens of thousands of jobs, especially at steel mills in Southern Ontario and BC. The manufacturing industry's getting back onto its feet and we've recently gotten a deal with Britain about secured trade within the Commonwealth. I wonder as to the sort of good you'll do when you come home…"

"Sir, you'll keep the troops ready and standing, right? There are many countries that have an adequate amount of wealth to hire us but not to maintain their own standing military, at least not one as strong as Shepard Industries."

King snorted "Of course, Hannah, though you're responsible for equipment, I'll handle pay and logistics fees. Shepard Industries, and the way you and your sister are doing things, gives a lot more to the economy than it takes. Besides, it helps national pride and unity, plus it brings in more money into the economy and keeps it there thanks to the policy of keeping business within Canada."

"Well that's good to hear, I suspect Hitler will keep probing his limits and we'll need to dissuade him more than a few times. Even then we might still need to go to war if he refuses to get the point…" Hannah stated with a sigh, running her right hand through her hair. "Wait… do you think we could give the troops some time off to tour the Exposition in Paris before we ship them back home?"

King shrugged "I don't see why we can't stay for a while, it's actually cheaper than many of the other pavilions to park seven thousand-plus vehicles in Paris as a demonstration of mobile power. After all, the Nazis have a 'bulwark' building opposite the Soviets, and the Soviets have in their pavilion a huge advertisement for communism. Parading Shepard Industries around, and later even having a group of troops for demonstrations and such will probably net us some good trade deals and show the world that we aren't to be pushed around. I'd say give the men and women a week to stay in Paris, divided into two shifts, half the crews manning the stuff at a time, as part of our expo while the rest go tour the rest of the pavilions. Actually we could do that by driving our columns around to a different pavilion each day, though the police force in Paris might be a bit upset at it, I'll get it cleared with Daladier. These days he's mainly busy with business to do with the Expo anyhow so it'll get through quickly enough. Try not to let your men spend too much though…"

"It's not the men I'm worried about, I'm more worried some drunk locals or heavens forbid someone from the Nazi or Soviet expos might try to grab some of the girls, and then we'd have to explain the sudden deaths and/or mutilations of those men to the public. I taught my troops to either not hit and avoid conflict or put the other guy down, and I didn't teach them too much about keeping the other guy alive while doing so. After all, a PMC doesn't have that much cash to burn on POWs that didn't surrender in the first place."

"Ah, well regardless of that, I suspect you'll also get more and better contract offers from governments wanting to hire your services…"

"I would imagine so. However I don't plan on accepting them, we need to after all get Canada in order and ready for the next war. I'm proposing having three million tons of shipping capacity afloat on the East Coast before 1939, with another million being built and enough escorts to keep them safe, at least eight for close defence and a hunter-killer squadron of six or more ships per convoy."

"That sounds far too many…"

"Hear me out, Mr. King. Each cargo ship is going to be N-TF-1937Bs or later probably Cs or Ds, they're lightly, and that's by my standards" They shared a chuckle at that, since Hannah's "Light Tanks" easily outclassed what other countries called Medium Tanks "Armoured, and armed with some AA gun capacity, which can also be used to kill submarines on the surface. Being equipped with anti-torpedo compartments to reduce damage, and skirts to further diffuse shocks from blasts by holding them away from the hull, they will be the most resilient cargo ships afloat, and each can carry up to a solid twenty thousand tons of cargo without affecting seaworthiness or damage control, and yes sir when sailing empty they fill the anti-torpedo compartments with water for greater stability. They can manage speeds unheard of for merchantmen, a maximum operational speed of 30 knots fully loaded and up to 50 knots empty, economy at full load is 22 knots and 25 knots empty, with one less boiler active, like my other ship designs. We only need fifty to make a million tons of merchant shipping, and add in the payload of the escorts, and we'd be putting through much more than anyone else could hope to, at least in the first stages of the war. It can also be used for peacetime shipping of goods, especially being hired on relatively risky jobs."

"Sounds alright, a hundred fifty ships don't sound too absurd." King stated. "No wonder why Jane's 'small' slipways were so staggeringly close to capital-ship sized on the east coast. A merchant ship able to carry twenty thousand tons without significant effect…"

"The ship itself would displace about 15000 tons, almost equivalent to the original _Dreadnought_, but with far superior torpedo defence and rather less anti-gun protection, but still very well protected." Hannah listed some of the proposed ships' wonderful features, as the TF-1937A had been quite successful at surviving torpedoes.

One, having accidentally separated from its convoy, had been fired at with a full four-torpedo spread from a German sub, detected by the dim bio-luminescence, thanks to the sailors using silent running. They had even turned the fleet coordination lights, which were akin to flattened balls with the equator cut out and a light bulb inside, off since it was too dangerous to use when not in convoy. The result was three smashed plates of skirt armour outside the cargo-free hull (one torpedo missed), and the TF-1937A had only needed to counter-flood one of the compartments on the other side to correct the small list caused by water coming in through the small holes.

The small lever-style, spring-loaded support struts that ran along the hull rails, holding the plates at a two-meter distance from the hull, had absorbed some of the punishment and snapped like they were designed to. The 20mm plates were torn up by the 21-inch torpedo blast, but they had served their purpose, prematurely detonating the semi-shaped charge of the torpedo and thus only crumpling parts of the main hull as opposed to tearing through and blasting a huge hole. As the ship turned and began to scan the sea for the sub, which was surfaced at the time, with its multiple AA turret lights, the sub commander was caught by surprise, since he had no real deck guns able to do severe damage. His only choice was to begin the process of submerging, which could take quite a few moments. It was during those moments that the searchlights flashed over his sub, then found him again. A momentary coordination between the turret crew and the narrow-beam radar (an SI special piece of technology that didn't throw off as much of a "here I am!" signal as a wide-beam radar did) control station turned its scan onto the sub to confirm and find range. Less than three seconds after the sub had been spotted, before it could fully submerge, shells began to lance into and through its conning tower, and other AP shells punched through the shallow layer of water to stab into its flanks.

By their nature, submarines were not very resilient to damage, so it was no surprise that the sub soon started to take visible damage and was forced to surface. The fight began to grow more lop-sided when the cargo ship, counter-flooding to balance the sharp turn fully, had heeled about through three-quarters of a circle and began a straight run toward the path the sub was going to take. The sub's commander thought he was about to be rammed, so he tried to manoeuvre out of the stupendously fast—the transport was at thirty knots, the maximum risk-free manoeuvring speed when not loaded—ship's way. That was moments before a gigantic explosion tore his boat to scraps of metal, only cloth and an oil slick floating on the sea showing it had ever existed.

Transports belonging to Shepard Industries were not "well-armed" by the standards of the designers for ships of their size, displacing just less than the original _Dreadnought_, however their bows, in the lump-like thing under the waterline on the bows of surface ships, had two 600mm torpedo tubes included, with two N-WT-600-2250As loaded by default. There were only two reload torpedoes, but four or even two torpedoes could severely damage an enemy capital ship in the event the transport was caught alone in a desperate battle. Most of the time, the big transports relied on their speed to save them, but if need be, and if its T was being crossed, well…

"So I'm proposing sailing in twenty-five transport convoys, running at 22 knots to Britain, the standard fully loaded economy speed for all my ship designs, considering that corvettes stay in economy roughly from 22 to 30, depending on load. They'll be using 25 knots, the empty economy speed, for the way back. The previous convoy there's escorts will serve as the next convoy back's escorts, because it takes a lot of time to unload. The Corvettes' cargo holds will need to be given some extra fuel canisters to be able to make the round trip without costing Britain or France any fuel, which is what we want in the event of a war. However, the Frigates and Destroyers are both far more than capable of making the round-trip, at full load there and none back, without needing to take on more fuel. At economy speed the trip there will take a week, and the trip back six days, giving a small margin of error for navigation and such. We could keep Britain supplied quite well with three million tons of non-warship shipping, building one million tons per year."

"Fifty ships a year is a perfectly acceptable project, and no doubt the provinces to get the contracts are going to be overjoyed."

"Shepard Industries only uses the best in technological capacity, Mr. King. It'll help us have many skilled workers later, I have a feeling we'll need them. Also, sir, I'm requesting you not give any contracts to Quebec, the separatist movement there is strong enough without giving them the extra skilled workers that will enable them to stand on their own."

"Of course, Miss Shepard, anyhow, I was going to say that your methods were what make it so affordable, in addition to not much of a need for war footing when war actually comes, because we'll already be ready in so many aspects."

"That is good to hear, Mr. King."

King stood up and Hannah did too "It's good to hear for me too, General Shepard. I should leave you to your rest." They shook hands.

"Good-night, Mr. King."

"Good-night, General Shepard."

* * *

><p><em>Vancouver, Canada, December 25, 1937<em>

The six huge propellers of the _Ontario_, the first of the Medium Carriers of Shepard Industries ownership, thrashed the water into a wild white froth as they quickly built up speed. The diesel engines had been fired up as the ship began entering the water, though the ship was still just the lightly armoured hull, engines and main bulkheads at present. The gigantic hull had slid down the ways and into the water smoothly, its propellers serving to slow itself down to a halt within quite a short distance. It represented a landmark moment for Canada as millions watched televisions put up in public places and in their homes, the totally free of charge channel that was in reality filling all the news channels in Canada. Men, women and children cheered as the great ship slid into the water, the first capital ship ever owned by Canadians, equipped with technologies well beyond the cutting edge. It served as an imposing, mighty reminder that Canada, despite its puny population, was still a vast country and a world power which could be counted on to make itself known. The launching broke tradition with no champagne bottle included, but that was irrelevant, besides, Shepard Industries broke tradition anyhow.

Headlines across Europe and the British Empire trumpeted the news for the next three days, and so it was that the British Admiralty sent someone to scope out the new construction that they'd utterly neglected. Despite the fact that over three thousand professional welders, electricians, millwrights, mechanics, engineers, quality control personnel, etc. had been swarming over the ship every day for the past nine whole months since the keel was laid, the Admiralty still hadn't fully noticed until the ship was launched for final fittings and sea trials. Churchill personally questioned why the Royal Navy didn't own any carriers of similar calibre. The answer he got was that there wasn't enough money in the budget to lay down any more ships at the current time, the maintenance of the Fleet was rather expensive, after all. Having obtained over a dozen battleships from the Germans after World War One, Britain had also inherited the fees required to maintain them. Unbeknownst to anyone except the Shepard family and King, it also meant the Royal Navy would be much slower than certain other powers i.e. the US, Japan and Canada, to grasp the power of the aircraft carrier. History was in the making, but no one quite realized at the time that the only thing that would be standing between the British and annihilation would be three million tons of shipping capacity and less than a hundred "escorts" of various classes, including only a handful of "escort carriers" and "destroyers".

Over the period since she had returned with her forces from Spain, the troops had mostly been on extended leave other than gathering together every month for reservist-style training to keep their skills sharp. As Hannah had predicted, quite a few of the men and women were now supposedly in relationships. It wasn't bad, as it boosted unit cohesion, cooperation in combat and efficiency, in addition to providing good matches, as the men of her military forces were probably among the most aware and respectful/understanding of the power of women, out of all the men in the world. However, they were also the only ones aware of whom or what she was: a woman.

That was beside the point as the two women supervised the fitting of the upper structures of the _Ontario_ and waited for the _Quebec_ to be finished enough to launch. That ETA was around Valentine's Day, as the workers had been put on leave from Wednesday, December 29th to Tuesday, January 4th. Of course, they'd all pulled overtime on the slip to have the _Ontario_ ready for the water as a Christmas gift to Canada, but they'd been compensated and would get a week's worth of leave, so no one complained. Hannah's rousing speech on the 20th may have had something to do with it though…

The yard consisted of the slips, in giant warehouse-style structures, opening into a stretch of water that was significantly wider than necessary, enclosed by piers that mounted huge cranes on either side to fit out the ship while another hull could be in construction on the slip. The crews managed to fit out another whole deck before going on leave, leaving only soldiers and guards watching the hull as it bobbed calmly in the water, at anchor and at peace. But it would not always be so…

It was not until a week after the launch of the _Ontario_ that the first Royal Navy official, a fellow by the name of Rupert E. Miller (A/N: Entirely fictional, but he's the guy who's going to get stuck with the job anyhow) was sent off from the Admiralty after much discussion about just who to send. He was from the office of the Fifth Sea Lord, at the rank of Captain, and he arrived in Canada on January 7. That meant that Hannah had to be the one to greet him in Halifax, and on the 5th she took the Canadian Pacific Railway for the first stretch of the trip, because weather in the winter over the Rockies was, at best, terrible for aircraft. Besides, it would be a good way to inform the man, if needed, that Canada and Britain were very different from each other. Once she reached Calgary via train, she hopped on a plane that would make a stop in Winnipeg, another in Ottawa, and then fly over Canadian territory in a loop to Halifax, going around Maine. It was an aircraft of her design, though for once it did not have a serial number thanks to being civilian. With twin 1250hp (the 1500 hp ones were still in final field testing which basically meant checking if it could run half-dunked in sewage, seawater, and other miscellaneous hazardous substances) engines it could fly as fast as a fighter yet could carry six passengers comfortably in addition to the pilot and co-pilot. This trip would only need to carry two passengers west and then back east later.

* * *

><p><em>Halifax, January 9, 1938<em>

Rupert Miller sighed as he paced in his hotel foyer, with six days of warning there was really not much of a reason for him getting shoved into a hotel for two days after his arrival. He knew that it took time to get the news through the bureaucracy, but this was almost worse than Whitehall…

"Is a Captain Rupert E. Miller present?" A moderately pitched but nearly hypnotizing voice asked Miller turned around and put a hand on his suitcases before realizing he was looking at a dark-haired woman in a clipped, simple suit that was attracting stares, especially with the five gold stars across the left side of the jacket. Those were, unless he was very much wrong, General's stars, but maybe it was just a decoration…

"That would be me."

"Good, name's Hannah Shepard, I'm your tour guide, from now until you leave Canada, come with me, we'll get you to BC where the carriers are soon enough." She had only been held up because of a blizzard in the Prairies forcing her aircraft to land in Regina for a stop-over. The only thing that allowed her to come so soon was the fact that her Winter Lube (S-LW-1937A) could handle the worst conditions the Yukon could throw at it (-40 degrees Celsius) and still remain perfectly functional. It also did not grow too thin, thanks to large amounts of Cholesterol being included, to work even at up to 25 degrees Celsius (typical temperatures of heated vehicle interiors during winter). Thus she was able to get her plane back into action right after the storm died down. "Please follow me… how much of that luggage is formal clothes?"

"Uh…" Miller was somewhat taken aback, but even with his acceptable recovery time the woman was already miles past him.

"You won't need them, but feel free to bring what you want. Regardless, we'll have practical uniforms and such for you when we arrive." She stated primly before gesturing him to fall in line behind her, when he didn't follow fast enough, she held out a piece of paper "Here's Prime Minister King's authorization for me to be your tour guide, now let's get moving, or we'll never get to Ottawa before dark." Unfortunately Hannah had shown up at 2 PM Atlantic Time and the 1100 kilometre (through Canadian airspace) flight would take a good three hours at cruising speed, counting lift-off and landing times, despite using military airports. Even with the time zone change it would be 5PM when they would land, considering the time this man would take to get his ass in gear, and that meant the sun would already be down, a combination of latitude and the winter solstice being only a couple weeks ago.

_Well, this is interesting…_ Rupert thought _Are they like the French around here, to send women who are so easy on the eyes to accompany visiting officials?_ "Lead the way." _And why isn't anyone even offering to take my suitcases for me?_

Hannah nodded with an appealing (to say the least) smirk "Gladly." Internally she was thinking: _Typical male… I hope his jaw actually falls off when I start showing him all the statistics, properties, and so on of the N-CM-1937A._ Once they reached the airport, which was fairly close to the hotel dignitaries were typically allotted, Hannah and Miller boarded the fairly spacious craft and took their seats on opposite sides of the aisle, the first row in the passenger compartment, which had six seats in pairs on either side of the compartment. Then they waited as the aircraft received clearance to take off and did so, before the soft droning of the engines became merely background noise. The internal heaters and thick insulation kept the temperature fairly warm inside the craft though Hannah was still glad she'd worn her Winter Uniform (minus the thick overcoat). "I hear you are here to investigate the new carriers." She stated in an off-handed manner.

"Yes, the Sea Lords decided someone had to figure out why Canada launched a bigger carrier than anything we have, even with those in construction." Recent plans for new British carriers, the _Illustrious_ Class, were still being finalized, as there wasn't enough funds to keep the battleships all maintained and lay down more carriers at once. The _Ark Royal_ had taken nineteen months to complete after the keel was laid down before being launched on 13 April 1937. Even now it was not done fitting out and projections put the completion of its fitting out at October 1938. It was smaller, lighter, less powered, not as capable of handling large numbers of aircraft—though that was to do with the aircraft—but slightly more armoured and armed compared to the Canadian ships. What was really alarming though was the sheer speed at which the Canadian ship had been assembled, taking only nine months from laying down the keel to launching. Something else that was truly awesome was that the first three months of 1937 had been spent _building the shipyard_ and training the massive numbers of welders—despite purchase of some welding machines—to do the job. Surely the launching of such a large capital ship only nine months after being laid down had to be some manner of record…

"Quite simple Captain Miller, we intend to establish Canada as a world power ready and able to assist the Allies in the Next Great War with more than just materials. America will be needed for its manpower and industrial base, but in the first months, when the navies of Japan and America are well-matched, we will tip the scales in the Pacific with our Medium Carriers and maybe even Heavy Carriers in the future. The Atlantic battles will be fought out by our Light Carriers and Escort Carriers, plus Destroyers, Frigates and Corvettes, against German U-boats and raiders. Our transports will tip the scales there as the U-boats enjoy failing, old tactics and have their 'Happy Time'."

"How are you so sure there will be a war?" Miller asked curiously.

"Time will tell, Mr. Miller, time will tell." Hannah stated mysteriously before changing the topic "Now I'm sure you want to read the manual for the carriers… here." She had pulled out a briefcase and pushed a book from the briefcase into the man's hands. The title read: _N-CM-1937A Statistics Manual, First Edition_.

"I suspect you could give me a succinct summary…" Miller stated slowly, looking at the rather thick paperback book.

"And I suspect that Whitehall will want to know everything in that book, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to read it, right?"

"Well, yes." Miller stated, though he had to take a moment to tear his eyes away from the wilderness they were flying over, wondering whether this wild, untamed land really was a part of the British Empire at all.

Hannah, on the other hand, was thinking about the work that would soon be starting on the six N-ED-1938As (Destroyers) on the East Coast and the number of N-EC-1937As (Corvettes) and N-EF-1937As (Frigates) in the works. She would be ready when war broke out to hammer into Chamberlain's face a gigantic stake with a sign saying "I told you so" in the form of six convoys on the sea, one launched per two days from Halifax harbour, which was being expanded and modernized rapidly. Smaller or slower freighters would need to dock on the Nova Scotia coast and transfer their goods over land to the fast convoy ships, but with her freighters taking over shipping lanes in much of the St. Lawrence that wouldn't be too much of a problem. After all, in peacetime she had to find ways to make the sort of money she did in wartime, and repurposing her transport capability to shipping, which made enough money from freight fees to be profitable, was one of said ways. Shepard Industries had recently seeped into the food industry, making compact, nutritious and fully-prepared foods that could be stored for long periods of time. There was a market with explorers for the compact, durable, nutritious and lasting tins of food, which didn't taste all that terrible, and more importantly militaries everywhere were buying the things in bulk. That was a decent bit of profit, and would likely only get better when operations expanded hugely once war broke out.

She reviewed mentally the scientists' progress. She'd managed to recruit a whole company of scientists from the US with patient listening, good pay and some government funding, plus freedom within their field of research. Their newest radar sets were even better than before, and THAT had been better than anything else by a long shot. The good budget and a patient, listening ear, plus putting them on tours of actual ship construction and test cruises had done wonders to make the most theoretical scientists practical men. Of course, the main thing that she had to attract scientists with was the fact that she listened and could understand what they were telling her. Instead of brushing their ideas off, for the ones that didn't immediately strike her as absolutely necessary, she'd tell them to prepare a report on the capabilities and suggest possible uses of a theoretical piece of hardware. If the idea wasn't great, she'd point out flaws and send the men out as passengers on a ship or plane to give them a sense of what they had to design for. If it was better than she'd first thought her usual course of action was to give them a budget and a sheet to requisition materials with, then set them to work. Projects that were obviously behind schedule got pay docked, usually. She'd fired a few men for trying to backstab their comrades, and had subsequently forced them to learn to cooperate. Beyond the initial bumps, R&D was mostly smooth sailing nowadays and was coming with new and practical stuff every month.

* * *

><p>AN: Hannah initially wanted to teach Hitler a lesson, but like every twisted genius out there, he took it the wrong way. Then she managed to pressure him into giving in, and Hitler learnt the art of that too.

The only technology I really gave her an advantage for was radar, and about the God-mod feel, you'll understand when we hear from the multi-verse later on, at the end of WWII as it states its opinion on this universe/timeline's version of WWII.

Next Chapter is all about the Medium Carriers and the rapid construction methods that Shepard Industries uses, including shipping huge crates of parts and plates to be assembled into, say, a fixed, fortified gun turret in a mere 10 minutes. Sound familiar? It is.

REVIEW!


	8. Carrier Has Arrived

A/N: God-mod syndrome for Hannah and Jane is explained here. However, don't expect them to always win, they'll still lose some. By the way, the Expo's effects are covered next chapter.

* * *

><p>Chapter 8: Carrier Has Arrived<p>

_Ottawa, January 9, 1938_

"My God…" Miller commented as the city of Ottawa and Hull came into view "You sure that's not Leningrad?" The terrain he'd just flown over was, after all, distinctly reminiscent of Scandinavia or Russia…

"Observe the lack of a lake." Hannah stated dryly, looking up from her own work "That's Hull and the other side of the river is Ottawa, half the time I'm left wondering if we should just squash the separatist movement in Quebec, and the other half of the time I'm irritated by King and the Cabinet refusing my repeated discreet offers to do so. They say it would be too much of an embarrassment, but still…" she shrugged. "How's the reading going?"

"The first section covers some basic naval aviation and Carrier history… why did you include it? I'm supposed to be looking for the statistics, not a history book…"

Hannah snorted "Right, did you read past the first two chapters?"

"I stopped at the end of the second chapter… then took some time to look outside. It's not every day that I visit a new country after all…"

"Though that's not the worst excuse I've heard, the third chapter is where it all gets good. It shows a basic overview of the layout and lists weapon capabilities, displacement, load-out, etc." Hannah grabbed the book from the man and turned to the appropriate chapter before shoving it back to him as the plane touched down. The two disembarked for some fresh air while the ground crew, with the help of the pilots, refuelled the aircraft. "Go on, read it…"

* * *

><p>The N-CM-1937A is intended to, one-on-one, be superior to all other modern aircraft carriers in defensive, offensive, and mobility. At full design load, it is, by far, the heaviest aircraft carrier afloat and the heaviest capital ship known to date at 65000 tons, and also by far the most powered with 210,000 horsepower in seven S-ES-300-1937A engines. Despite its weight and power, it is designated as a "Medium Carrier" and is, when empty of aircraft, supplies and aviation fuel, displacing "only" 46000 tons, capable of pulling off 45 knots by design, though optimal manoeuvring speed is about 30 knots. When its displacement is increased, however, the maximum speed and manoeuvring speed match at 35 knots thanks to the increase in draught and stability. Most of the heaviest materials are stored near the bottom, further improving stability despite the armoured flight deck and hangar decks.<p>

The first and most obvious trait at a glance of the N-CM-1937A is the 275-meter length, 60-meter width and 40-meter height of the ship, counting everything. This makes it easily among the largest carriers in the world, if not in length and height then in width. The island is noted to be very long, thanks to the inclusion of armoured garage-style elevators that allow for operations to continue perfectly safely even while the ship is under fire, as opposed to opening a hole in the deck that provides a good way for rounds from otherwise ineffective guns to intrude. At the waterline, the hull is 250 meters long and 50 meters wide on average, though this is subject to change as the load changes. The draught will typically be around 8.8 meters at full load and 6.9 empty, leaving about 16 meters freeboard on full load, as the bottom of the hull is 25 meters below the flight deck, and 18 meters when the ship is "empty".

The top 10 meters of the hull are occupied by two 5-meter hangar decks, able to accommodate up to 96 aircraft of the V-F-1937B type without cramping. Despite the decks being mostly empty space, they still represent a large part of the mass of the Medium Carrier thanks to their armour protection. The flight deck plates are 80mm of RHA, which stands for Rolled Homogenous Armour, the same hardened molybdenum-chromium-nickel steel that is used in all Shepard Industries vehicular designs and construction. Unlike armour types found in most other ships, RHA is also structurally functional as opposed to being dead weight, ergo the outer hull is 30mm RHA throughout and the hangar deck floors, both sets, are 20mm RHA without compromising functionality. Counting the 60mm RHA around the island and the 10mm internal walls of the ship, and the 30mm bulkheads, which divide the ship into 24 water-tight compartments arranged from tip to tail, the armour plating sections add up to a total of slightly over thirty thousand tons. The propulsion system put together accounts for only about a thousand tons while the rest of the 46000 ton "empty" displacement consists of many weapons mounts, ammunition and 120mm RHA citadel plating around the main magazines of the ship, as well as eight thousand tons of fuel oil.

The seven engines feed their power out through six shafts, using four-blade propellers instead of traditional three-blade ones, and can thus propel the ship at up to 45 knots when moving in a straight line and "empty". Loaded fully it can make 35 knots, however, when full, economy speed is 22 knots while empty it rises to 25-27 knots. The maximum range, fully loaded, is 24000 nautical miles at 22 knots, representing a fuel consumption of 0.6790 kg per second per engine or an average energy release of 29.265 Megawatts (at 43.1 MJ/kg), though with the 750 watt horsepower, used by Shepard Industries, this is 39020 horsepower, it only contributes 30,000 to total shaft horsepower for a ship, thanks to the powerful dynamo included. This allows the Medium Carrier to be extremely automated, as well as having reserve horsepower to throw in when one or more engines becomes disabled. The fact that there is also a usually not used gearbox system to transfer power to shafts should all attached engines be disabled also reduced the efficiency somewhat. However, there is still more than enough power even at economy (only the last engine in each line-up burning fuel) speed to allow for hot water (though using seawater) showers onboard. Each engine is connected to two propellers, three engines for the center pair of shafts and two for the outside pairs, but there is a gearbox, which is usually bypassed, that can allow for engines to power other shafts, as previously mentioned. The engine rooms are armoured and sealable, as are the shaft holes, which means that should a shaft be forcibly removed from the ship the hole can be plugged and the Medium Carrier can keep afloat and stay functioning by rerouting power from the other engine banks for the other shaft in the pair (tearing out a shaft would probably damage the set of engines too much for immediate continuation of function to be safe). Thanks to modular construction of engines, shafts, and rudders, the whole thing is stupidly easy to repair, upgrade or replace. However, that's mostly thanks to the cargo elevator and the fact that the engines can be disassembled and reassembled on the spot if need be, thanks to the spacious engine rooms and compact engine sections.

In terms of more important aspects, the aircraft, the N-CM-1937A can carry up to 8 squadrons or 96 aircraft comfortably, and carries 10000 tons of aviation fuel and 4000 tons of aircraft ammunition, mostly armour-piercing bombs and aerial torpedoes, though the latter have not yet (as of December 1937) been designed. The Medium Carrier also sports 9 arresting wire lines starting 20 meters from the stern with one per 15 meters, though it has no catapults. The rationale is that by the time catapults become mandatory for carrier aircraft they will have become heavy enough that any current catapult will be inadequate and a refit would be needed anyways. The lifts used for the aircraft, S-CL-20x10-1937B (Support System, Carrier Lift, 20m long by 10m wide, model B of 1937 line) models, the same as those recently refitted to corvettes, are much heavier-duty than the A models. This is thanks to the need for armour plating for the 4 elevators not in the island (note that those lifts installed on corvettes do not have the armour), which are sealed with the deck when under fire. All are arranged with their long sides in the direction of the ship's bow-stern line to minimize space occupied. A total of 60 S-WM-15A mounts are present, at present mounting 50 dual 40mm gun turrets and 10 smokescreen mortars. The mortars are uniformly distributed, at the quarter points of each side and at the corners of the ship. Two S-WM-45A mounts, matching those on Frigates, add six N-WC-200-50A (200mm) cannons in triple turrets to the main armament. Like all other SI designed ship turrets, it can elevate between -5 and 60 degrees, and traverse as much as the surroundings allow. Given that the turrets are directly in front of and behind the island respectively, their field of fire is not wonderful, however it is more than adequate for dealing with small ships that might sneak up on the Carrier, though of course this is NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. Carriers should always be accompanied by a large group of escorts, and not be surprised by enemy units, especially submarines. However, if cornered, this carrier also sports two torpedo tubes (total of eight N-WT-600-2250A torpedoes) for self-defence in the bow like every large Shepard Industries ship designed to date. Against subs, it can only rely on these tubes, its speed, and three pairs of depth charge divots, a pair near the bow, one amidships and one near the stern. Each depth charge divot has 20 N-WDC-450As in its magazine (450kg depth charge, 80% warhead= 360kg HE). Notably, the reduction of large-calibre turret count compared to other modern carriers, partly due to any anti-ship duty being taken over by the torpedoes, is very helpful to reducing the weight of the ship.

Beneath the flight decks are six additional 2.4-meter decks for ammunition stores, fuel oil, engines, crew supplies, quarters, etc. The island, however, is all business with several main stairways and ladders for ascending and descending, with massive amounts of electronic equipment, including rangefinder and general scanning radar sets. Atop the island, there is three meters left for the equipment, because the 5-floor, with 2.4 meter floors, structure does not fill up the 40-meter total ship height measurement. There is so much in terms of automation that, amazingly, the 275-meter-long ship only requires 800 crew, with an additional 400 aircraft-related crew members to run at maximum efficiency. Needless to say, the extra weight included in the full load weight includes a large amount of supplies for the crew, crates of spare aircraft parts that can be assembled into aircraft if need be, and the aircraft themselves.

That concludes the abridged report on the N-CM-1937A. For comprehensive listings, please turn the page and continue reading.

* * *

><p>After two hours more of flying (They were over halfway to Winnipeg by now) Rupert E. Miller had finally chewed his way through all the technical specifications, which he could feel weighing on his brain. The summary was, indeed, very good, and all he'd need to add were the side notes that the things it spoke of were damned reliable, tough, and well worth the money they cost Canada. In fact, he was thinking Shepard Industries had offered a bargain. It had handled all the materials at discount prices while the Canadian government simply created jobs and gave money back to its citizens. Why couldn't Britain have a company like that? He voiced the question in the form of "Canada sure is lucky to have a company like Shepard Industries helping it out… could you guys come help Britain out." That was of course after he'd gotten Hannah's attention.<p>

Hannah Shepard burst into laughter, and took quite a moment to calm down "You really think Britain would sponsor ships designed by and built sort of for MY Private Military Company?"

Miller did a double-take after his initial nod "YOUR Private Military Company?" He winced internally as his jaw opened so far that it felt like he'd sprained it. Then he rubbed his jaw gingerly while staring at the beautiful woman sitting across the aisle from him.

She smirked and saluted smartly "Yep, General Hannah Shepard at your service, as you can tell from the stars." She pointed at the five gold stars above her left breast, again very glad she was wearing her uniform, because having what was considered a bustier-than perfect figure (about seven decades later it would fall within the ideal range) sucked at times. "You are sworn to secrecy, by the way, if you blab, I have authorization to silence you." She winked at the man with intent to intimidate, and it worked, especially in the passenger compartment, the only part of the plane where the lighting had been put on (pilots had to fly mostly in darkness so their night vision wasn't ruined). "Just report to the Admiralty whatever technical details you want… and no copying the book by the way, it would give them a heart attack to know too much, and we don't want that. Other than that, please enjoy your tour of our facilities… that is, when we actually get there. We'll stay in Winnipeg for the night and fly to Calgary in the morning before taking the train over the Rockies."

Miller tried to shake off his sudden fear and changed the subject "How fast are we moving?"

"Roughly four hundred or so kilometres per hour, about two hundred fifty miles per hour, that is. Canada is a big country, Captain, much bigger than Britain. We're going on a five thousand kilometre trip."

Miller gaped again, he'd known Canada was big, but how big had never quite struck him "Five… five thousand kilometres?"

"Yep, I hope you're looking forward to visiting the shipyards and have lots of things you can do on the train… I want that book back now, by the way." He handed it back dutifully "After all, can't have you knowing our tactics, some spy might fuck it out of you as pillow talk." She stated unflinchingly as he blushed as red as a tomato. "I am aware from your file that you are a married man and have been for years, but males are mostly made to run around and try to mate with as many as they can, so I believe it possible that you'll be targeted…"

"And you're not afraid that anyone else to read that book would be targeted?" Miler spluttered indignantly before realization hit him with roughly the force of Hannah's glare "They're all women, aren't they?"

Hannah blinked at the conclusion "Well, no, however, you are an easy and obvious target, and there's more value to you than a random soldier in my corporation in that you're part of the office of the Admiralty. Does that make sense to you or do I have to drill it in harder."

"I think I get the point that you're a genius by now, Miss Shepard…" Miller sighed and slumped back into his seat "It's just a big revelation, you know?"

Hannah shrugged "I know, it tends to be a bit of a shock…"

* * *

><p><em>Calgary, January 10, 1938<em>

"Even the foothills of the Rockies must seem huge to you." Hannah stated as Miller squinted up at the mountains ahead, with his head sticking out of the window of the train as it took on more passengers. To maintain stealth Hannah had dressed in normal women's clothes today and insisted Miller wear civilian clothes as well.

"Yes, they do seem rather… epic." Miller replied absently before retracting his head.

That had been hours ago, now they were in Vancouver and taking the specially built Light Rail Transit system that linked the Canadian Pacific Railway train station, the shipyard, and the docks of the main Port of Vancouver in a large ring-shaped route. It was nominally for freight-hauling from the docks or rail station (the parts for the ships had to mostly be shipped in after all) with its one freight car. However it also made a pretty penny with three spacious passenger cars for commuters who didn't want the hassle of parking cars. SI's advertising campaign helped greatly in the realization that cars are a hassle to park downtown, so it was making some money off the system. That was just so the LRT didn't run a large deficit, and it was expected to become a part of public transit in Vancouver in peacetime.

As they made the final stretch toward the shipyard complex, Hannah gestured to the view they had (the Light Rail station was a relatively short distance from the complex to give more room for moving things around, so they could see the whole shipyard from the windows) "Behold, Canada's first Aircraft Carrier, the _Ontario_."

"That… is one big boat." Miller stated dryly.

"And that… was meant as a sarcastic joke in response to my attempt at grandeur, I do believe." Hannah replied, just as dryly.

"You believe correctly." Miller nodded as his eyes stayed glued to the ship, which was visibly being worked on with large piles of materials, including plates, boards, etc. on the deck. There were support braces holding up the pre-fabricated wall sections as they were welded into place with expert precision onto the ready surfaces, which had been cast to be ready in the first place, but Miller didn't know and didn't need to know. Industry secrets after all…

Hannah nodded sagely at that "Good."

It wasn't long before the Light Rail train stopped at the station and the doors opened. Passengers poured off and Hannah led Miller trough a path which had opened on sighting the General. She had changed into her uniform moments ago during a duck-in to the washroom where she stripped off the feminine clothes and put on her uniform jacket. "We're using all-welding construction to save weight, but… you know well that it's still the heaviest carrier in modern times thanks to the armour plating making it impervious to aircraft gunnery. The crews are working hard to fit her out as soon as we can so we can begin sea trails. All the crews were trained on Frigates, since the engines are the same as the blocks we used here, S-ES-300-1937A models. The guns are also the same, including the 200mm cannons." As they spoke the work crews cleared away from a large part of the deck, visible from their position in an observation tower. "There's one of the prefabricated turrets, it was assembled from spare parts in the main compound and brought here by the mini-train system of the shipyard. Observe that it's a consistently one-way ring system so the trains can keep going without needing to back up or really restrict the number of trains too much, though that's a non-issue at present."

"Very inventive…" Miller noted as he watched the trains leave the main track set that had side-lines cycling through each of several big warehouse-style structures where obviously some things were being put together before entering an elongated loop structure that had several side-tracks going off the other side, one going into each pier and circling at the end before returning to join the main track again, almost like a circulatory system. Hannah was right, the small, fairly slow trains needed only be careful when joining the main circuit and when moving down a pier, nothing more. Usually the cranes would immediately pick up their goods, since there weren't too many trains. Miller could only see two parked at the piers, one on each side of the rails nearest the _Ontario_, as the _Quebec_ was still on its slip. "How many trains are there anyways?"

"There are four per ship, in the case we've got eight active and four more in storage." Hannah stated "It really helps when it comes to moving big things like gun turrets."

"I bet… three-gun turrets aren't that light after all… wait, what calibre were those again?"

"200 millimetres is a sliver under 7.9 inches." Hannah stated matter-of-factly.

"And they're the same as a Shepard Industries Frigate's guns… same calibre as other nations' cruisers… my God, what sort of a navy are you building?"

"A tough one, what did you think?" Hannah rolled her eyes as they watched the turret be aligned by men pulling on ropes attached to the turret, pulling it slightly one way or another, beyond the sort of adjusting a crane could manage. Then the turret was smoothly "dropped" (more of a controlled slide) in after the mark was found and the ball bearings and lubricant applied to the base ring. Finally a seal ring of metal was slotted over the S-WM-25A mount base by the crew inside the turret pounding it down with great hammers. Valves on the inside would allow for adding of lubricant when needed, as the seal wasn't perfect and the lubricant would slowly evaporate over time from the tiny gaps. Thanks to a weak healing coil on the inside, it used standard lubricant, which was designed to run between negative 10 and 30 degrees the best. Air conditioning would do its best to keep the temperature below 30 even when in the tropics… however, a slight loss of efficiency was acceptable if the temperature got high, changing lubricants was hard work after all.

"…Right." The entire process of installation took a mere twenty minutes to complete as the two watched, and another train had arrived with the second heavy turret, which was being installed at the same time as the first. All the while, other men took advantage of the cargo elevators to move equipment into the bowels of the ship, though they'd have to manhandle it in parts or on carts to the destination in most cases, it was still much easier to use the elevators as much as they could. Needless to say, that was a lot of use of the four armoured elevators that weren't part of the island… "Does work always go this fast?" They had been watching thousands of people and multiple cranes swarming over the ship like an army of ants for only an hour and both of the larger gun turrets were now installed and at least mobile, as testing had shown when everyone backed off to allow for the traversing and elevation tests. Over a dozen of the smaller gun turrets and mortar turrets had already been installed, while the trains began bringing in larger parts of the island, having been welded together in the work sheds the previous night, to be assembled on the ship. Some of the trains even went into the big shed that held the Quebec's slipway, carrying large pieces of the ship's engine support structures and such into the big garage-style door in the back of the shed and exiting through the other back door carrying nothing.

"Nope, usually there are two rush hours in the shifts when enough stuff has built up to do frenzied installation, such as that needed to install multiple big items at roughly the same time, otherwise most people are welding and calibrating or inspecting parts in the work sheds, or calibrating, inspecting and re-inspecting stuff, but we expect to have the ship fully fitted and ready to be commissioned by February 14th, this year. It'll be purely SI-owned, since I convinced King to mainly pay for an East Coast shipping program instead, I'm providing all the parts here, all he's doing is paying the workers and factory overhead, so the ships are exclusively going to be my property. Shepard Industries has primary allegiance to Canada, and we lease our services for only a basic fee, which is lower than maintenance costs for a military of our size, in wartime anyhow to Canada. Other countries don't get such a good deal."

"Mercenaries owning capital ships… no self-respecting country would allow that." Miller mumbled.

"Ah, but you forget sir that we're mercenaries with morals and a primary allegiance, and a patriot as our Private Military Company's General and Founder." One of the officers monitoring construction efforts piped up as he noted more details about progress and basically monitored the area with the other men present in the observation tower.

Miller wasn't about to be rude, so he merely watched as the hour of frenzied work slowed down and many of the men walked down the boarding "plank" (though it was more like a large steel stairway with tall safety handrails that was put in position by a crane and locked into position at the top to the ship) to the pier, boarded the last empty little trains and returned to the work sheds where stuff kept happening. Sure, men were still working and welding on the ships, but the pace had slowed down significantly, because some jobs, such as assembling the island, could not be rushed beyond about one floor per three or four days, if they were lucky. Unfortunately frequent rains meant the assembly of the island typically took six days per deck, and everyone was very happy about having bilge pumps and a giant pseudo-tent-like roof that a crane could hold over the island when it rained (if there was not much wind) so work could continue.

Right now, they were putting up/in the third deck out of the five decks that would be there. To Hannah, this was one of the slower times that dominated a day. So, the two watched as two more little trains, ten minutes after entering two of the work sheds, took up positions near the three towering cranes on each side and had their goods removed. The cranes were in the middle of the piers, so they could theoretically swing around and work on another ship in another of the waterways in front of the slip sheds if needed, but here it was not needed and the only six cranes on-site (the other ones on the other piers hadn't been fully assembled yet) were all concentrated on the Ontario, the three on the island side (starboard side of the ship) holding up massive pre-assembled walls for men to weld, then bolt, into place on the island. The port side cranes were moving materials from the trains onto the ship, using their reach, which extended a good sixty meters over the ship, to help as much as they could with construction, including helping hold up the wall of the island that faced the flight deck for the middle crane.

There was nothing really NEW about the technology that went into the project, just a somewhat new combination of old technologies, plus practiced crews and call-signs, as well as a reasonable but speedy rhythm of work that left enough margin for errors. A loud crash sounded as a large plate fell flat on the mini train tracks, the crane hold having failed. More ropes and chains were run under the thing and soon it went up again, now steady, and was slotted into part of the superstructure, being held in place by large right triangular constructions of steel that had been hoisted and then manhandled into place so it wouldn't fall over easily, a few basic structure-holding bolts were quickly plunged in using electric drills as screwdrivers before welding began, then a few more bolts were put in, after the welding had sealed the plates of metal together. Finally another coat of welding locked everything into place and a corner frame piece was bolted in on each side of the thing to protect it better, then sealed in with solder.

"We should go look at the work sheds." Hannah suggested, and the two senior officers descended the stairs "We don't have all day to watch them assembling Deck T3. By the way, the decks are numbered with the flight deck level as Deck T1, and each one above that is increasing in number. Below the flight deck, the Hangar Decks are H1 and H2 respectively, and below that we have H3 through H8 for the six lower decks. T means topside and H is for Hull. There are four personnel elevators and two maintenance ones in the ship, starting on Deck H1 and going to H8. The personnel ones are near the sides while the maintenance ones are more center-line so that men can easily transport engine parts for repairs or disposal if it's going topside, and torpedoes for the forward torpedo-room. It might just be for emergency self-defence, but it sure as hell is better than nothing against an enemy battleship, should any commander be dumb enough to meet one at close range. Each engine room is divided into two parts by a water-tight bulkhead and has enough air intakes and exhausts are present that even with half sealed and the other half working the engine can still run." Hannah was telling Miller, who was being an information sponge and just listening.

"You seem to have over-designed the ship, how much did it cost?"

Hannah dodged the question, as the ship had only run over the 15-million dollar budget upon launching and was expected to cost twenty million dollars in all, though King and Parliament had cheerfully accepted, with the government stating that it was much cheaper than other carriers of lesser might. Of course, it was basically part of the Canadian military most of the time, Shepard Industries' rate for serving Canada so low it practically made a water-thin profit at best, and Canada footed the relatively small (relative to strength and other militaries) maintenance cost. "It's not as expensive as you'd think considering how efficient we are being about build time and such. Yes, I did over-design it, so I'd think it could keep moving under its own power with any list below about 50 degrees or so, don't worry, it's not engineered so that it can still get back home with a 180-degree list." She joked before they reached one of the work sheds, making room for the relatively small locomotive to pull its two flat-bed cars in before crossing the rails (after looking both ways just in case) and entering through one of the people-sized doors.

"This is… amazing." Miller stated in semi-awe as he watched large crates being hauled in by trucks (towed and carried) and dropped off on one side of the building, he could see through the big doors to where trucks sort of flowed in a one-direction loop, stopping only to unload goods. The crates were immediately brought over to the welding areas by forklifts and unpacked, starting with removal of the eight corner pieces holding the outside together, before prying away two faces, removing some of the internal corner-shaped holding pieces, and then removing them from the top and sides. Then the internal contents of the crate were displayed to the world, mostly in the form of a stack of the same square plates that had formed the sides of the crate, to be welded together into a board for a wall or bulkhead according to the instructions included. Some "crates" included curved edges on their plates or even curved plates.

"This is where they assemble many of the plated parts, though the second currently active work shed also handles some of it." Hannah stated simply. "As you can see, we're very efficient about packaging. Come now; let us go to the second work shed."

Miller spared the efficient mass assembly of the armoured plates another long look, noting the finished plates being piled up and tied together with chains, and then being loaded on a forklift for loading onto the flatbed cars, before he turned away and followed Hannah out another worker door on the other side of the work shed, passing the loop in the rail system, where it was closest to the truck system loop (and the far wall from the trains' entry/exits). After crossing the several dozen meters to another gigantic work shed, they entered to see the assembly of 40mm anti-aircraft turrets. The things were too heavy for a conveyor belt to safely handle, and besides, Hannah didn't want to risk giving her work to a bunch of assembly-line style drones which could only do one thing over and over. That was why the most professional welders and armourers were moving around to the projects, welding the more difficult things on, checking the assembly of the gun barrels, and so on while less knowledgeable workers were doing most of the work. Crates for the packed-up gun turrets were rectangular instead of square, so there was enough space to accommodate the three-meter barrels of the A-WTC-40-75A's (40mm Autocannons) and still be manageable in weight for cranes to move around and for men to assemble the parts contained inside. Still, production was going quite quickly, and before long five turrets had been completed and four taken away on a little train. Then five more crates were brought in and assembly began "How many turrets does your ship have?" Miller asked, though he knew, it was better to have confirmation and it would help him estimate build time.

"Sixty of the mounts, though they can be traded out in later upgrades no problem." Hannah stated casually "Anyhow, this shed has only been working on the turrets for today, it's usually up to more interesting projects such as pre-assembly of engine parts, as much as could be transported in via the maintenance elevators." They had had to install the bulkheads and such first before stringing together the engines, propeller shafts, and so on, especially the gearbox mechanism that allowed any bank of engines to drive any or all propellers if need be. The designs for the water-proof, reinforced and easy-to-seal transmission mechanisms involved had taken Hannah quite a couple nights worth of design work and calculations. After all, uncontrolled flooding along a torn-up propeller shaft could easily be lethal to a ship, even if it's from a breach in the side of an engine room and not from the shaft hull exit itself. "Assembling a turret only takes ten minutes for an experienced assembly crew, and then we let it air-cool to make sure the welding jobs don't become brittle from cooling too fast, finally we check it with oil and chalk dust. That is what takes the longest." Hannah explained. Eventually she hoped to mechanize most of the process so that it could easily be done in field installations, and make work even faster. She planned to make it so that shortly after landing an amphibious invasion force a full firebase could be set up, complete with war factories, barracks, anti-tank and anti-aircraft turrets, armoured pillboxes, razor wire, airstrips and radar installations. There would of course be multiple power plants to keep the whole base working with full power (with some for back-up in case others were destroyed), using underground power grids to connect the base. Redundancy which would be needed in the power grid system would mean that buildings couldn't be spaced TOO far apart, and just to be safe the smaller-consumption buildings could have their own generators. However, what was most important was that generators meant smoke and/or noise, and attracting attention to a pillbox or turret was not good.

Of course, assembling a power plant in the field required local armed superiority, and would be needed to build smaller, even more forward, positions. Long range artillery was a threat, however Hannah believed the doctrine could eventually be possible with improved technology. Besides, the radar installations that would someday be deployed in the field would have to be able to permit for counter-battery fire. That was a long way off in her opinion, at least eight years, by which time the next war, with Germany, would probably be over already.

Anyhow, the tour of the installation soon wrapped up with hitching a ride in the spacious driver compartment of one of the small locomotives, which were oil-fired. Plans were in place to change them to being electrically powered, drawing off power from nearby hydroelectric projects that had recently been built, but that was for the future, probably when the yard was taking a break from finishing the _Quebec_, launching the ship first, while the Ontario was finishing up final fittings most likely, as the ETA on the _Quebec_ hull was the Fifth of February now. They went out on the pier and Miller watched the goods being picked up before the locomotive took its flatcars away, going to the end of the pier, doing a U-turn with the tracks and coming back down the rails on the opposite side of the pier. That gave him a better look at the sheer size of the Canadian-built carrier, since from "up close" (twelve meters, seven if you count the waterline's horizontal distance from the rails, which were two meters from the edge of the pier) it just looked like a wall of steel. There were of course gun barrels poking over the side, and it appeared to be ominously leaning toward him even though he knew the design was all that made it seem that way. Though he did not know it, Hannah had been playing with her relatively portable radar set (a technology thanks to the massive Canadian-government-subsidized R&D department of Shepard Industries, most recruited from America and bound by long-term contract to stay) before going to Spain when she figured out that a sloped hull had a smaller signature and was harder to pick up, ergo all her ships had at least slightly sloped hulls.

They re-entered the main circuit of the track and went around to one of the administration buildings, there, an APC waited for them. As they were headed back to the LRT station, Miller suddenly noticed the camouflaged twin gun barrels that characterized a T-1936A hidden in the undergrowth by the road-side. "Hey, is that a Medium Cruiser Tank?" He asked, that was, after all, the British designation for Shepard Industries' Light Tanks. The things had eighty, EIGHTY millimetres of armour plating all-round, for heaven's sake!

"No, that's a camouflaged AA turret." Hannah stated bemusedly "I bet you can't even pick out the Pillboxes and Camo Pillboxes I've deployed to keep the area secure."

"Well I never realized there were such defences until I saw your Medium Infantry Tank waiting for us…" Miller grumbled. Hannah laughed internally, how audacious of the British to term her vehicles Medium when she'd hardly gotten started on building better tanks than any previous ones? They would understand what Medium meant in good time, but for now she'd let them think whatever they wanted… Miller's body language betrayed him for the rest of the trip as he scanned the surroundings via periscope… and found nothing if his body language was anything to go by. She didn't really blame him, who would think that a somewhat larger than average sewer manhole beside the road, ostensibly for drainage, was really a "Mini Camo Pillbox" retracted into the ground? The thing had only five casemate-style horizontal vision slits in the sides for the soldier inside to use, and one machine-gun which could be inserted into any one slit to use to fire outward.

"Don't' worry about it, Mr. Miller, I'm on your side… the Allies' side, and I always will be." Hannah stated quietly, nearly huskily, in the man's ear, and he twitched so hard he managed to bang his forehead on the periscope's rubber eye-guard that was supposed to prevent damage if a sudden lurch in the vehicle occurred. She smirked at his reaction, good, she hadn't lost her touch. She might not feel any sort of attraction toward men, or even women, but she still knew (had learnt, in fact) all the tricks and how to turn men and any lesbian woman into putty in her hands in seconds. Breathing on their ears and necks was one of them.

"Good to hear that." Miller stammered before they reached the LRT station and disembarked, the man fighting the temptation to wipe his forehead.

"Well, let's get you back to Halifax…" Hannah stated airily "I gotta check on my Ontario and Atlantic-based business ventures anyhow, remember, Captain Miller, you don't know me." She winked "Just as a bit of incentive to forget who I am, the Americans were working on radio location systems too."

"And how do you know this?" Miller asked suspiciously.

"I managed to obtain a large number of scientists from the US, duh." Hannah rolled her eyes as the LRT train pulled up and they got away from the wall (the station had safety lines painted on the floor, and people obeyed, as not obeying could mean a fine) to walk toward the train. It made Miller feel about two inches tall, if that, and dumber than your average rock—at least rocks, when breaking, made a sound, which contradicted the "dumb" aspect. It felt worse than the few times he'd done something seriously wrong in his marriage, maybe he would try to be a bit closer to his wife when he got home (like most Navy families, they'd grown up and apart). His wife had at least never made him feel like a dumbass… other than now, when he was realizing just how nice, warm and friendly his wife really was compared to certain others who shall not be named. Well, okay, so maybe his wife HAD made him feel like a dumbass when she told him she was pregnant with their first child and he'd gaped and said "How?"

* * *

><p><em>Vancouver, February 14, 1938<em>

The cranes lifted away from the ship for one last time after loading several dozen additional clearly labelled crates, which were spare, packed up, fighter craft and dual 40mm gun turrets. Those were taken below deck to H2 by the armoured flight elevators and transported further down via the other elevators. After all being packed away neatly and locked in place, the reports came in through the intercom from the various armouries and other parts of the ship. As the various status display buttons blinked from red to orange to green one by one, Hannah stood simply on the armoured bridge of her new ship, looking forward toward the sea, well, Vancouver Island to be precise, but that was beside the point. Finally when everything was green across the status display board, she began issuing orders "Helm, take us to five knots forward, navigate us out of this pier assembly and take us southward, we're going through the Juan de Fuca Strait."

Hannah thought it was mainly because Vancouver was the only fully viable naval base on the West Coast (Victoria required additional supply shipping, which was dangerous if subs could be smuggled into the Strait) that she chose it. After all, it had an easy-to-seal chokepoint. Well, two chokepoints, if you counted the narrower northern passage to the Pacific, but still, the sailors thought it was still a risky prospect and the skirt armour lines were always fully manned, waiting to drop the thin plates to hold explosions off the hull for damage reduction just in case there was some crazy person out there with a torpedo. The ship had, after all, been formally commissioned only this morning, and left the shipyard two hours after the launching of the _Quebec_.

The Canadian Navy (they got rid of the "Royal" after the Statute of Westminster) harbour pilot had only made one remark that was not about the ship, well, a couple, but they went like this:

The man tilted his head and frowned at her "You look a bit young to be leading a major military faction… you can't be much more than, what, eighteen, nineteen?"

"I'm thirty-eight, thank you very much." She had stated simply as they were moving out of the dock, with only the center aft engine (the engines were in a hexagonal array with one in the center, aligned so the three lines to the propeller pairs were 2-3-2) powered to save fuel at their current low speed.

"Wow, and you're… still single?" The guy had noticed the lack of a ring.

"Don't even think about it old man." The Captain she had chosen for the _Ontario_, one twenty-nine year old Captain Williams (taken from the First Aviation Brigade, because he had experience with boats and ships), growled menacingly at the older male in question. Once again, Hannah had managed to win the interest of the entire crew, other than the women onboard (mostly medical staff but a fair percentage of non-brute-strength jobs too), who simply treated her as a liberator and hero of sorts, a pinnacle of womankind.

"My family ages stupidly slowly after we mature." Of course, that did not imply biological fitness if her understanding of Darwin's Evolutionary "Theory" was correct (despite the scientific "Theory" definition being quite different from the colloquial one). Her parents had tried for nearly twenty years without any form of contraceptive before she had been conceived, and they hadn't had another baby since Jane had been born, though not for lack of trying nor for being too old. Neil and Jade were often mistaken for being in their late twenties still, despite both being a bit over eighty years of age, and last time she'd visited they had still been, as usual, trying and failing to keep the noise level down. Apparently they were out of practice for both daughters having left the nest already, and going at it at least three times a day was not conductive to being discreet. If Hannah's analysis was correct, her mother's sexual appetite had only grown with age, and her father had rose to the occasion. Well then, good for him. However, there had been one conversation where she'd asked her mother when she began to be attracted to men… Hannah thought back as the harbour pilot took them out of Vancouver harbour.

* * *

><p><em>Some Time Ago… i.e. Late January, 1938<em>

"Hello Hannah, how was the compound?" Jade asked her daughter as she came home after going to the research compound that had been opened in what would later be called Mississauga.

"It's fine… Mom, when did you first start finding men attractive?" Hannah asked bluntly.

Jade blinked in surprise before replying "Well it was after my periods started, I can tell you that… I think I started really looking at boys around sixteen years of age, to be honest, and I married your father when we were both twenty-one, we've had more than sixty wonderful years together now…" She smiled dreamily and sighed.

"Well I'm not attracted to men, I don't get hot and bothered, and I don't feel any flutters in my stomach… ever." Hannah sulked before her mother hugged her baby girl, her brown hair mixing a bit with Hannah's glossy black strands.

"Oh baby… it's alright if you prefer women to men…" Jade murmured. "Your father and I will support you anyways…"

"I don't mean that, it's just that I've never been attracted to anyone… anyone at all. I think there's something wrong with me." Hannah stated, for the first time, Jade thought her daughter sounded dejected.

"Building a coil gun when you were ten, pioneering advances in rifle design, building a firearms company from money earned from your acting career, persuading King into funding an Expeditionary Force, creating a Private Military Company… and you think you're NOT unusual my little girl? You're deluding yourself aren't you?" Jade teased good-humouredly.

"No, it's just… is there something wrong with me? It's like I was born to fight, born to make history… but what about myself? Someone asked me if I had a man of my own… someone at the compound asked me if I believed in love in a casual conversation." It had been a woman who was happily married to her husband, one of the scientists on the facility. The woman had been employed on the "Non-Hazardous Caretaking" staff of the facility. Therefore, Hannah had concluded the woman was just happy that day and was chattering, but it had made her question herself just slightly. "I don't think I do, but if I don't believe in love… what do I believe in?"

Jade sighed and sat next to her elder daughter "Only you can tell yourself that, baby girl."

* * *

><p><em>THE MULTIVERSE<em>

_Maintaining a general path of history and its plausibility requires drastic, highly implausible measures._ The Multi-verse consciousness honestly believed that. Besides, it was fun to toy with mortals. Of course, messing up individual mortals also tended to leave a bigger mark, especially if you God-mod them, but that was beside the point, it was all fun and games… Actually, the Multi-verse itself wasn't sure if this was just an expression of its sadist side, it had after all tortured the same crew—starting with the poor woman's parents—over and over for kicks. Even though it tried its best to give some of the main cast solace in bonding closer than anyone else could to their lovers, it always took sadistic pleasure in tearing them apart painfully. After all, it had to find some way to vent its more sadistic aspect, and one death is a tragedy, a million a statistic…

Wait, had that quote even been said in this universe's timeline yet?

Ah well, who cared?

* * *

><p>"I did, I told myself. I'm defending the rights of the weak and downtrodden, and smashing the oppressors down a peg or two if they get too absurd. So I can up was an easy slogan… even though it sounds too stupid and dictatorial to ever use." Hannah would never use it, but someone else would.<p>

"What slogan?"

"Peace… through… Power…" Hannah made it sound as dramatic as she could. Mother and child shared a good laugh at that… Unbeknownst to them, Hannah would one day be VERY angry at someone for "stealing her quote".

* * *

><p><em>West of Vancouver, February 14, 1938<em>

"This… has got to be the easiest handling ship I've ever had the pleasure to drive." The pilot was muttering as he finally left, having manoeuvred the gigantic carrier through the harbour with absurd ease, thanks to the five rudders (most other ships had two, if that) arrayed between the six propellers.

"He could say that again… alright, boys, steer us into the Juan de Fuca strait and begin preparations for aerial operations…" They were going to use small wooden boats towed behind Corvettes (N-EC-1937Bs now, with the elevator upgrade, though it had taken a while to decide that the change was enough to warrant a new letter code) as practice targets for dive-bombing. There would also be a slimmer, deeper raft (with ballast rocks in sacks at the bottom to keep it deep enough and from flopping onto its side) for use of the new aerial torpedoes.

Of course, the men had all been trained extensively with training rounds on ground, and attacking targets at sea, but this would be the first and only trail involving live ammunition lobbed at a target at sea AFTER launching from a Carrier deck. It would take half an hour to prepare all 96 aircraft, now the V-F-1938A model, fitted with a 1500 horsepower engine, a wide wingspan and able to carry two 400kg bombs. After half an hour of making slow and almost absurdly tight circles (thanks to five big rudders), the carrier was ready.

Even as the speed of the ship rose to thirty-two knots and it curved gradually around the turn of the Strait, the elevators were at work, bringing up, two planes per lift. The aircraft, significantly larger than typical carrier aircraft, could outdo all other carrier planes of the day with absurd ease. The All-Purpose Aircraft had foldable wings that could actually be pivoted to lie back against the fuselage, as well as a folding tail, though folding and unfolding took some time, with all the support rods that would be pushed through the junctions, it compensated by allowing the large planes to be carried on, well, a carrier.

Larger wing area meant shorter take-off distance, and, beginning their run as far back as could be done safely, the first squadron of aircraft roared down the deck and took to the skies before they even reached the end, having taken off essentially in pairs. That prompted the next six aircraft (fully prepped already below decks, so no wing-unfolding business necessary) to taxi off the elevators and take up positions using the new invention of airflow redirection devices to protect the deck crews from the powerful wind of a propeller revving up. Even though taxiing diverted a minute fraction of engine output slightly, and thus disengaging the propeller was an option, it was still not fun to be blown into the wing of the next plane and hit your head as you were doing final checks. Therefore the Airflow Redirection Board had been built and installed on the deck, to fold up and redirect the airflow upward somewhat and protect the deck crews as the first two aircraft roared off, finally taking off the brakes as their engines revved up to full.

The next two rolled forward the moment the Boards were brought down and once the planes passed the boards, they went back up. The engines rumbled louder as they were gunned before the signal to take off was given. The same procedure was followed by the next aircraft, and those after that, and those after those… In less than thirty minutes all 96 aircraft were in the air in a standard landing-circle type formation before the order to form up into attack groups was given. Two squadrons of fighter-configuration aircraft, those squadrons that had been first to take off, as they consumed the least fuel and had the most endurance thanks to the absence of heavy munitions, immediately gunned for height. The third squadron to have gone up was also in fighter configuration, but they stayed among the dive and torpedo bomber configurations to provide close escort. Of the remaining sixty aircraft, twenty-four were torpedo bombers, armed with the N-WT-450-1000A Aerial torpedo. It was effectively a miniaturized version of the N-WT-600-2250A in that it used a 300-kg HE warhead and had a range of 2500 meters. It may have had something to do with secretly obtaining the schematics of the Type 91 aerial torpedo from Japan that helped give Hannah and Jane (mostly Jane this time) the ideas needed to give the weapon so much kill-power and keep it reliable AND accurate. Needless to say, it had been a covert operation, but it had succeeded in obtaining the desired schematics with no friendly casualties. After all, who would have reckoned that they would be so audacious as to just walk in and photograph a copy of the documents?

Apparently, nobody, so they'd missed the blatantly obvious "infiltration" and now, after many successful trials, it was time to do it live-fire for once. The stabilizer system, which had been something copied off Japanese preliminary drawing boards and improved, had already been tested, this was simply one last test during the ship's maiden voyage.

It had unanimously been agreed that after many landings with the munitions, on land, that this time they would attempt the greatest stunt in all of carrier combat stunting: Landing on a carrier with weapons load-out intact. If they could do it on the ground a hundred times without any of the munitions blowing up, why couldn't they do it on a deck? After all, the aircraft involved were large enough to carry the torpedo inside the fuselage and only open the (rather oversized) bomb bay doors when needed (in fighter load-out, the doors were locked shut, barred and bolted to boot). The planes could also choose, for dive-bomber load-out, to carry two V-WBP-400As in separate cradles for separate targets if desired, or drop both from both cradles at once at a single target.

The thirty-six dive bomber configuration aircraft were flying in eighteen pairs, forming a three-line arrowhead formation with the last three pairs forming a smaller arrow in the back (like with the last arrow 3 pairs and not 5). The 24 torpedo bombers occupied airspace ahead of them in two arrowheads and two pairs (: formation), and the 12 close escort fighters took positions around the loose formation, two pairs at the sides of the first arrowhead (of TBs), two pairs each on the wings of the first and third dive-bomber flights. The 24 fighters overhead also flew in pairs, but they formed a more phalanx-style formation of 4 pairs wide and 3 pairs deep. It was to allow swooping down on enemy fighters while the Torpedo bombers could begin their runs with a dive and the dive bombers could gun their engines and follow after their comrades.

The targets were located with ease by the planes, thanks to a large glass viewport in the bottom of the plane that allowed the rear gunner to serve recon duty with relative ease. After all, he or she needed only look down. Sure, it was mostly looking out toward the opposite direction of where the plane was headed, but distracting the pilot was just dumb, and the leg-room of the gunner could be more useful than just intruding on the weapons bay. The gunner would report to the pilot, who would report the position and heading of the enemies to Command and then keep monitoring the situation. The fact that the pilots had all been trained for well over a year was a great help as they attacked the targets, which were being towed at fairly high speeds (up to 40 knots for the dive-bombing targets and 30 for the torpedo targets). However, only one squadron of each type of attack aircraft actually went on the warpath, the others simply mimicked the dives and pulled up in formation out of them. The torpedo bomber pilots also used dives but pulled out closer to the water to drop their payloads close to the target, knowing the torpedoes would adjust for depth and that this was the best tactic unless in harbours. The torpedo would hit the bottom in a harbour instead of coming back up as it did now.

Even the high speeds of the targets could not save them from being hit by the live ammunition. All the torpedo targets were towed by one frigate some distance away from the two towing dive-bombing targets, the latter were obviously using longer ropes to tow as dive-bombing was not THAT accurate and the sailors were being cautious.

Fifteen out of twenty-four 400kg bombs scored hits on the small (10m wide, 30m long) targets while the rest were fairly near misses. Of the twelve torpedoes, nine hit targets, the remaining three kept going through the dispersing cloud of wood splinters until they hit some rocks near Vancouver Island, which meant a series of rather noisy explosions… The first live-fire exercise had gone quite well, now came the hard part…

Everyone held their breath as the fighters spiralled overhead and the first still-loaded torpedo-bombers came lumbering in from the landing circle above the _Ontario_. They carried the heaviest, most dangerous ammunition, so would have to be dealt with first (ammunition firestorms were highly hazardous after all). One… two… three… the minutes ticked by as the aircraft were landed, stopped by the arresting wires, and struck below to be immediately disarmed. Finally, by the end of the sixth minute, the last one of the twelve loaded torpedo-bombers were unloaded and folded up below decks. It was also when the loaded dive-bombers came in for landings, one after another they were snagged by the many arresting wires and disappeared down the elevators. Twenty-three made it without incident. The last one caught an arresting wire… with the wrong set of machinery, the front wheel in this case, and pitched forward onto its nose and front wheels before landing with a crash on the rear pneumatic tire. Immediately men rushed toward it and choked the wheels before evacuating the aviators. It took a tense minute before it was certain that the bombs were no hazard and the plane was taken below decks to be disarmed and have the damaged propeller cap be repaired. The ammunition would be inspected and maintained, but it was a lot less wasteful and relieved logistics services to save what they could as long as it wasn't a hassle. This was, judging by how smoothly things went, apparently NOT a hassle. Therefore, it was decided then and there to incorporate into doctrine that unless an aircraft was noticeably damaged (deck officers were also responsible for looking for signs, such as smoke), landing with weapon load-out intact was acceptable. Of course, the fact that there was always an armoured forklift available to shove burning aircraft over the side of the thickly armoured deck through the space between two turrets kind of belied the amount of confidence they had, but that was beside the point.

Unlike American carriers, the _Ontario_, hell, all SI carrier designs, did not have a net-type emergency stop device, as they tended to break aircraft. What were mosquito bites to America's resources could well be crippling losses for Canada, ergo all refuelling, rearming, etc. was done below decks, however the number of very large and fairly fast elevators compensated at least to a significant degree for the lack of plane-breaking/operation-accelerating devices such as nets and catapults. Besides, the planes themselves were far ahead of the competition…

* * *

><p>The maiden voyage of the <em>Ontario<em> went on without a hitch as it wandered southward, rounding Cape Horn fourteen days after departing Vancouver (minus its General) and steaming into Halifax on the twenty-ninth day of its voyage. It didn't have to refuel even once, though it did take on oil and supplies AT Halifax… and then sailed back the way it came because Hannah predicted Medium Carriers would be more needed in the Pacific while the Atlantic was an escort battle. The _Quebec_'s maiden voyage would be far less impressive, as the design would have already been proven in all sorts of weather by its sister. It just sailed to Panama and came back home on its first run.

However, troubles were brewing in the world, though it might not know it yet, the Shepard family did, and so did Canada's government by association. With the _Ontario_ two days out of port, Hannah turned back in a corvette after receiving a disturbing report from her associates in Japan…

* * *

><p>AN: Told you there was a reason she's a bit God-mod, however she won't win EVERY battle… such as the Battle of France, she'll lose that.

We just met Ashley's great-grandfather, by the way.

REVIEW!


	9. Seeds of the Future

A/N: I know curb-stomping is annoying and boring to read/write, however didn't you notice how the Battles of France and Poland were curb-stomps? Hell, Barbarossa started as a TOTAL CURBSTOMP! The Soviets had better tanks in the T-34 and KV-1 by far compared to the Germans, but tactics, training, doctrine and leadership upset the scales disastrously. Given a fully-motorized column doing hack-and-slash attacks, Hannah will never falter unless she meets a real defence line like the Maginot or Rommel at Tobruk in I think 1941, the first time around anyways. Rest assured that when the T-40 tank is deployed by the Soviets (the T-34 entered production in 1940, so why call it 34?) Shepard Industries will begin accumulating appreciable casualties though the kill-death ratio will still favour them by far. Technical comparison will be shown in the next chapter. Also, Hannah has ONE BIG FLAW: She thinks the best anti-tank weapon is a better tank, so when her vehicles meet the Flak-88—which by the way did not reach the Condor Legion in any numbers before their entrapment on the plateau region of Spain—boom. The only thing SI has that can counter the 88 at its max range of 14 km against ground targets (as artillery, not anti-tank direct fire) is the A-WAG-100-55B with maximum 29km range, either that or massed aircraft equipped with high explosive bombs.

To Too Lazy, I think the God-mod thing was explained, wasn't it? Hence we have someone who is fated to be the multi-verse's plaything. Obviously the multi-verse likes to shape the plaything to be essentially perfect minus the insanely low fertility part. Also, about breasts, back in 1938 something close to the big end of G-cups were considered a bit too large for a 180-cm woman, but later on that size would be considered, well, excellent. Eventually there will be a section describing on just how genetically "defective" someone needs to be to cross the "fitness valley" to the next hill (natural selection and fitness is like a mountain range after all, with many peaks and valleys, the latter of which is very hard to cross). And don't worry, I'll also explain WHY some people (Hannah, Jane, and later in a whole different universe/timeline the Coalition) can stay young-looking for well, ever…

* * *

><p>Chapter 9: Seeds of the Future<p>

_Ottawa, February 18, 1938_

"Are you sure these reports are accurate, General?" King asked, staring askance at the newspaper clip before him.

"Aye, smuggled off Japan discreetly, we've managed to get this newspaper clipping. Also, the Japanese ambassador in Germany was boasting that their army killed five hundred thousand people as they went from Shanghai to Nanking." She gestured at a recently purchased map of China to make her point.

"And how do you know this?" King asked, completely shocked by the numbers she was citing.

"Got it off the American ambassador there, he said he'd overheard it, it's in the report I paid him to give us, Roosevelt did agree with you after all when you two talked about sharing intelligence on the Japanese. I think our Carriers are fostering better relations, since they could be a big help in the Pacific." Hannah stated with a clipped tone that barely concealed her sheer rage.

"So what do you propose we do about it?"

"Nothing, except we need more ships off the West Coast to batter the Japanese into submission once it gets stupid enough to challenge America and bring in our industrial giant ally. We could take the time to give them the bashing they deserve for their superiority complex…" King could have sworn he saw a fire in Hannah's eyes as she clenched her fist "it shall be their downfall…"

"Why are you so angry about it?" King asked, inching backward in his seat. She mutely shoved another communiqué under his nose.

It was a diary entry by one Reverend James M. McCallum, reading "I know not where to end. Never I have heard or read such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night, and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet… People are hysterical… Women are being carried off every morning, afternoon and evening. The whole Japanese army seems to be free to go and come as it pleases, and to do whatever it pleases." King's left eye was twitching by the time he finished and looked up at the now cold woman.

She shoved a film reel/spool-thing under his nose "Also, here is the film made by the missionary John Magee from film clips he captured of the Japanese Army's takeover of the city, you are welcome to view it, I have, in my private plane with my highest-ranking Generals." Hannah had been very glad to have brought lots of brown paper airsick bags for the men, or the single toilet at the back of the plane would have been wholly inadequate for their vomiting. She had not vomited, merely crushed her chair's wooden armrests in her grip as she bore witness to unspeakable atrocities. "The estimated death toll is somewhere around 100,000 officially, but I suspect that since that estimate it has risen to about 300,000 as a bare minimum."

The actual death toll before the Nanking Massacre would end was about 400,000, counting bodies that were never found. This included the surrounding counties and Prisoners of war, as well as at least 150,000 civilians. (A/N: Historically accurate, remember, death toll estimates are always too low… so it's more than the 370,000 that people came up with as a likely total).

Hannah stayed for the night and watched the film with King, his wife, and the Cabinet and their wives. She brought in her troops and divided the audience into male and female sections so they didn't try to cover their spouses' eyes. In a few more decades by her estimate the average TV audience would be totally inured to what they were about to witness, but in the current day and age, well…

* * *

><p>AN: This is historically accurate, sorry to Japanese deniers but just all the war crimes against POWs support the fact that the Japanese Army is capable of infinite atrocities… and will explain the eventual Shepard Industries policy adopted shortly after invading the Home Islands. They weren't willing to do it, but after a few engagements… it had to be done. REMEMBER, I AM GOING FOR HISTORICAL ACCURACY AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! If Nanking offends you, look it up and face it, it was real, just like the Bataan Death March, get used to it. This isn't Japan-bashing, it's called being real.

WARNING: GRAPHIC BUT MID-RANGE DEPICTION OF (in this specific case fictional, but this sort of thing really happened) RAPE AND MURDER IN THIS NEXT SECTION. It's mid-range because it doesn't go into explicit details such as blood spraying with every fading heartbeat or anything like that or intestinal contents splattering the ground as guts were shredded… I'm not changing the rating for one scene that's not really smut anyways and is sickening rather than arousing.

**SKIP THIS SECTION IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO UNDERSTAND HANNAH'S BLAZING HATRED OF HIROHITO! OR IF YOU ARE OFFENDED BY THE IDEA OF NANKING!**

* * *

><p>One section presented in the film was that of Japanese soldiers breaking into a home in Nanking, captured on video by John Magee. The missionary seemed to have been inside the home at the time of the soldiers pounding on the front door, and was pushed into a secret storage room and told to stay hidden. Then he filmed through the window looking into the courtyard, hiding himself behind the giant urn while the camera was put on the lid of said urn to look out the window without anyone outside able to see it in the shadows. The man who opened the door to the courtyard was thrown backwards after a bayonet ran him through, then men in Japanese Army uniforms spilled into the courtyard and entered the rooms around the yard. The men were shot or bayoneted while the soldiers began tearing the clothes off the two women first found before the people of the home had even all been rounded up, pinning them down to rape them on the ground. The screaming was horrifying to the stunned Canadian Cabinet and their wives as they heard more gunshots off-camera before a now wailing pregnant woman and two girls were hurled bodily into the courtyard. One of the girls couldn't have been older than eight or so and the other probably about fourteen… A Japanese soldier was cursing as he tried to shake a bundle, with bloodstains expanding on both sides and obviously wriggling, off his bayonet with no success. His comrades were laughing as he finally kicked the bundle off the blade, the cloth wrapping the thing unravelling as it hit the ground and bounced several times. The unwinding fabric finally revealed what was, recognizable even in black and white film, a small, limp hand sticking out by the time it came to rest. Then the Japanese troops, satisfied that they'd found everyone in the home and either killed or seized all of them, descended on the terrified woman and the girls like a pack of wolves as they were thrown down, their clothes torn off, and the Japanese soldiers dropped their uniform pants and went to work.<p>

Hannah looked around, some of the Cabinet's wives had already fainted, and chuckled internally, coldly, there was far more, far worse, to come. She could not give these politicians and their wives any sympathy, since at least they were not being subjected to this holocaust. By showing them, she could mobilize the support she needed to build up her power base until, in the end, she could crush the concept of racial superiority whenever it dared rear its head. She didn't blame the Japanese people or even the soldiers. It was their commanders, their Emperor and Generals. THEY had poisoned the people's minds. Those Generals and their Emperor's lot would die, every single one of them. Then she fixed her attention back on the screen.

The younger girl was apparently too small to rape comfortably, so the Japanese troops looked to an officer that had come with them for directions. He barked something in Japanese, and the soldiers took out their combat knives. Then the girl's legs were wrenched open by two men while another held her upper body down. The camera angle was quite good, enough to that the young girl's privates were clearly shown. At this point Hannah was glad she had stood between the men and women in two banks of seats in the audience, having to slam several women back into their seats and glare them down to prevent them from trying to obstruct their husbands' fields of vision. She was also very glad she had brought soldiers to help keep the audience from doing anything stupid. Then there was a collective gasp from everyone except King and herself, both of whom were gripping their seats hard enough that the wood was squeaking—wait, that was just her—as a fourth Japanese soldier with a knife plunged it into the girl's privates before jerking it out and sheathing the knife just before he impaled the screaming girl on his dick. His comrades were laughing as they beat the dying girl up while their friend took his turn with her "loosened" body. Then they indulged in the same as the girl was bleeding out all over the ground.

The pregnant woman was struggling, but stopped when she saw her daughter being mutilated before her eyes, merely laying there in sheer shock as she was gang-raped vaginally and anally at the same time. (According to later narrative by John Magee, the Jap soldiers learned fast that rape victims bit HARD). The older girl was screaming her head off as she was impaled on two dicks at once while her mother was similarly violated and her sister was bleeding all over the ground. Finally the soldiers finished with both girls and looked to their officer for instructions. A few barked commands brought a bayonet to be rammed up the younger girl's anus at such an angle it sliced through her belly and her guts began to spill out as she convulsed a few more times before death claimed her. The older girl had stilled in her struggling in shock at her sister's gruesome death and was bayoneted up the vagina, then left to die in a rapidly expanding pool of blood, the bayonet replaced with a cane now as blood kept exiting around the gaping wound in the girl's death throes.

The woman was thrashing around again before being thrown to the ground when the officer (identified by additional insignia on his uniform) decided to finally take his turn after his soldiers were finished. The men held the woman down on all fours as the officer raped her from behind as she screamed, blood running down her legs. Then the officer bent over enough that he could plunge his combat knife into the woman's huge belly. Magee's camera caught the action from the side, and there was no mistaking the soundless spasm of shock as the woman's head arched back, her mouth half-open in a silent cry as she was gutted like a fish. With a few quick slashes, the fetus was extracted with the umbilical cord still clearly visible, and was sliced open to be thrust onto the ground under the woman's nose. That was just before her head was pushed into the remains of her murdered, once-unborn child and she began to twitch violently while the officer slammed into her from behind over and over. The man was holding her head down into the mess on the ground until a combination of sheer blood loss from her shredded abdomen and suffocation killed her and she went limp, then he grabbed her hips and kept raping her corpse until finally burying himself fully within the body and stilling in release for several moments. Finally he pulled out and pulled his pants back up, buckling his belt as he and his troops left the house and the gigantic mess they had made behind without a second look back. That was other than two soldiers, who had earlier refused to participate with the rest of their squad of twenty men, who looked at the corpses with difficult expressions. One wiped his eyes with his sleeve as the other went over to the corpses and closed their eyes before both visibly heaved a sigh and trudged out with slumped shoulders at a barked command from their officer.

That clip ended with John Magee stumbling out of his hiding-place with his camera still apparently on, walking past two groups of Japanese soldiers who'd met on the street. The officer recognizable from the prior clip was talking about how the other man had a thing for not letting his troops cut women up. The other man replied that his troops didn't leave huge puddles of intestines everywhere, and that it was more practical to just leave the corpses with canes or other sharp objects stuck in their vaginas. Besides, it was a lot nicer to look at, even though it might be as fun in the short term. And the corpses could even be reused after being killed for any soldiers who enjoyed raping corpses. The first officer scoffed at that and said that only the other man would enjoy fucking dead women, and the accused nodded with a vicious smile… That was all John Magee's camera caught before he rounded a corner and got away from the mess, still trembling if the vibration of the camera footage was anything to go by.

* * *

><p>AN: In war, there are always monsters, and always **those who didn't like acting like monsters**. I'm putting the last two men in because no matter how much indoctrination is done, not everyone will turn. See the movie "Letters from Iwo Jima" if you haven't done so already, not all US GI's are good people and not all Japanese soldiers are berserk.

Remember that in the 1930s few people will have seen real violence and killings at least in Canada, especially the Cabinet, so they will be shocked far beyond our modern "Yeah, whatever" attitude.

* * *

><p>By the end of several hours of film, most of the audience was catatonic, it was after all several hundred minutes of non-stop rape, murder, looting, more rape, more murder, burning victims alive or dead on pyres, even more rape and murder, more looting, mowing down thousands of civilians with machine-guns, and finally Hannah had added footage of the newspaper clippings and such, showing the "100-Kill Streak Contest" on the front cover. Some people just couldn't take the sheer scale of it…<p>

Of course, that also meant that the Cabinet had unanimously agreed to give her free reign over 200 million of the 250-million-dollar defence budget of the 1938-1939 Fiscal Year, starting on March 1st. That was of course provided materials and such were purchased in Canada and the work was done in Canada. Hannah planned to lay down another Medium Carrier immediately upon acquisition of the funds, dozens more Corvettes and Frigates, and modernize harbour facilities along both coasts. She also planned to bring another half-dozen Escort Carriers into construction and start work on six Light Carriers. It would fall well within budget.

The she began another one of her speeches, this one had been written with twitching hands as she had watched the film during the flight from Calgary, as they had been grounded by another storm and she had the time to finish the film. "My countrymen, you have borne witness to the greatest crime against humanity, the greatest war crime, in the history of mankind, greater by orders of magnitude than the sacking of Troy or any other you can think of. Today, we stand here and declare that this will not go unpunished!" There was a great roar of agreement from her audience, and men and women alike pounded their fists, often dripping blood from how far their nails had dug into their palms, into their chairs as they bellowed their outrage. "On August 6th, 1937, Emperor Hirohito of the Empire of Japan declared that international laws on prisoner treatment were to be abolished in the Japanese Army, as was the term 'Prisoner of War' was to be omitted in most reports. On that day, Hirohito authorized massed war crimes and crimes against humanity among his bestial soldiers. Bear in mind that it is not the Japanese people responsible for these travesties, but their military, their generals, their government, and most of all, their Emperor. When the time comes for the showdown of the Pacific between the Empire of Japan and the United States of America, I pledge that Shepard Industries forces will be on the American side to drag Hirohito out of wherever he is hiding and punish him for what he has sanctioned. WHO IS WITH ME?" There was a roar of agreement

"All of Canada stands with you, General Shepard." King stated quietly "Provided we win the next election we'll be a team, fighting together to destroy this rabid beast that is Hirohito."

"Understood sir, and I swear to you that I will see him and his ilk in the government, and his whole rotten dynastic line erased if it's the last thing I do. Members of the Cabinet, we shall fight for what is right, not what is easy! Even if Japan surrenders, we shall eradicate its rulers, and show all those hungry for justice that human decency still lives!" There were final rumbles of agreement at her up-thrust fist before the emotionally and physically exhausted politicians started making their way out of the conference room to their cars, headed home. Many had to rely on SI men present (Hannah's entourage) to help unconscious spouses or coworkers into vehicles. But the point had been made, when it came time to grind Japan into dust, Canada would be there, its soldiers fighting for what was right instead of what would be easy.

When only Hannah and King were left, his wife having fainted and been taken home, he sighed "I really don't like how the seeds of the future seem to be going right now, but we have no choices left, war is inevitable, and the best bet we have in Canada at least… is you."

"Don't worry, Mr. King, I will win this as long as you win the next elections, and believe me, with the amount of jobs we've created, people will be clamouring over themselves to vote for you. Good luck, sir, I need to get back to work."

"Good luck to you too, General… I have a feeling we'll all need it before long."

In fact, they needed it the very next day when someone brought up the problem of relocating the Japanese living in BC. Hannah had abruptly stood up and punched the desk as she did so "Just because Englishmen murdered French people during the Hundred Years' War, didn't mean the Englishmen in French had to be put in concentration camps." She had growled at them with blazing eyes "All we need is to persuade them to move to the Prairies, after all, so many farmers have abandoned their farms and there's still plenty of land available for them. Do you understand my point? Just because your third cousin was a murderer or rapist doesn't mean you are, right? Is that not a bastion of civilization, the recognition that a person's crimes are his or her own? The most that can POSSIBLY be influenced are those of the same household, but remember that the immigrants from Japan these days are mostly fleeing the military regime there, or just want a plot of land to farm. They will not stand against us if we treat them decently or give them some land for free, besides, when we put them on the prairies it's much easier to subdue any uprising using armoured units on terrain suitable for tanks, yes?"

The Cabinet Ministers and Prime Minister were all gaping at her sudden, impassioned, brief, to-the-point, convincing and totally improvised speech "Indeed, General Shepard… I believe you have things right. Here, this was the topics list I made. It mentions fear of racial crimes against Japanese in BC, where anti-Oriental sentiment has always been strong, and what to do with the Japanese people. I think that the best way to treat them would be to register them and inform them that they must move out and accept government relocation within three years."

"That sounds fair." The Defence Minister (who Hannah/Jane often spoke with) stated "That way it can allow them to get what they can out of their goods instead of having something to REALLY complain about later, after the war. How will we justify it to them though? They'll probably vote against us next year or the year after, depending on when we have our election."

"Let's justify it by showing them, and I mean the Japanese people, some of the video clips of Nanking and talking about how we're afraid people might start attacking them for it." Treasury suggested "What do you think General?"

"Well, it's the best excuse I can think of…" Hannah shrugged "Let's do it, we need to make sure they're off the West Coast by the time war breaks out with Japan."

* * *

><p><em>March 13, 1938<em>

"This emergency meeting of the Cabinet is to discuss the recent merging of Austria and Germany, as well as the progress of our new shipbuilding projects. Hannah Shepard, please begin the briefing." King stated in a clipped tone, he'd summoned Hannah from where she was supervising harbour modernization in Halifax and shipyards on the Nova Scotia coastline upon receiving the news, having wired a copy to her too. She'd stepped off the plane with some major opinions, and they'd talked into the evening before going home or in Hannah's case to the ambassadorial hotel in Ottawa to rest for the meeting next day.

"Germany has taken Austria as another test of how far the Allies are willing to go to uphold the Treaty of Versailles, we need to hammer it now or face inevitable war in the relatively near future." Daladier had told her that he would place an order for aircraft, but thus far apparently the French military was too stubborn… It didn't matter for now. "We can't really do anything at the moment other than keep building up our fleets, since no one has tried to hire my company yet for business. I smell conflict in northern Europe though, Lithuania is having a harder time with its Memel Territory because of its attempt to colonize the area, which is going to be useless, and I suspect Finland may come under attack by the USSR, which also has expansionist agendas. However, I believe that we can thwart Hitler on his next move, which is to take back the Memel Territory, and get a good deal of money from Lithuania for providing our services. After all, political backlash will be minimal, for Shepard Industries is technically a Private Military Company. The Finns will also likely give us a good deal if we support them, at least getting neutrality if not a staging point later in the next war for attacks on Germany." She was gesturing with a pointing stick to the map she'd brought, and the Cabinet members seemed to all be in agreement.

That was, until one asked "What if helping the Finns starts a war with the Soviets?"

Hannah snorted "What's Stalin gonna do? Send the Red Army to try to hunt for a mercenary group? That would be an epic failure in the end, one country can't take on the world after all, and do you REALLY think the US would let the USSR invade Canada?"

"Well I guess you're right…" the man grumbled. "I hope the contract is worth the money it costs to send men overseas though…"

"It will be, with my fast-attack tactics, you needn't worry."

"Well if you say so." The man trailed off at that. Others began asking questions too, but Hannah deftly dealt with them one after another until everyone was content that her plans represented the best possible chance of either averting another Great War or putting the Allies into a winning position. However, there was one minor problem, the authoritarian regime in Lithuania was hardly treating its citizens in the Memel region right, so they wouldn't have much of a moral high ground by defending it, even under contract, from Germany. But that could be dealt with later, including signing a treaty with Lithuania on how the Territory's citizens were to be treated once they warded off the German menace with their presence. After all, Germany had declared that any clash between Lithuania and Poland would result in the Wehrmacht taking over Lithuania. However, it said nothing about other powers getting involved… or rather hired.

Hannah knew that she would probably be able to secure a good contract, especially with the show her troops had put on at the Expo last year. Over 4000 armoured vehicles rolling through the city streets in procession one day was a huge shock to the citizens before they all parked in the empty ground behind the Canadian pavilion. It had been put right at the edge of the city grounds because Canada was not much of a world power out of those at the Expo. Well, Daladier soon figured out it had been a smart idea, as nowhere else really had the space to park all the vehicles in ranks. One Division was on-duty at a time, guarding the area and manning the vehicles with skeleton crews (just the gunner, or gunners if applicable). Needless to say, it was the most popular pavilion of all in the days that the troops spent there. An airstrip was quickly set up among the ranks of parked vehicles, and the fliers began to do performances in the air, using mock battles of paint rounds and confetti "bombs" to dazzle the audience on the first and last days of the Shepard Industries soldiers' stay.

The _Ontario_ had arrived in Halifax harbour and everything was reported to be satisfactory. After refuelling, it would be headed back to Vancouver to form part of the new Canadian Pacific Fleet. As for the _Quebec_, after her fitting out she was to make a short tour to the Aleutians before sailing to French Polynesia and back. Experience had sped work up a bit, and the ship only cost 18 million to finish, unlike the Ontario's 19.5 million dollar price, which was still a far cry from any two other modern carriers of similar total displacement.

* * *

><p><em>September 30, 1938<em>

Hannah paced in front of King's desk impatiently "Unacceptable, completely unacceptable." She was of course referring to the Munich Agreement and how appeasement was failing miserably before Chamberlain's blind eyes.

The Prime Minister rubbed his eyes tiredly and sighed "I know, but we can't really do anything about it, it's not like we can go to war with Germany on our own, and Chamberlain still insists on appeasement, I doubt even you could make him see the light. Right now I'm beginning to think Churchill of all people" King did NOT like Churchill "might be better for this sort of situation… How are our war preparations going?"

"Swimmingly, we have a hundred and fifty freighters and fifty troop-ships available now, with their speed and giving one day to load and one day to off-load, they will be able to manage an average of 10 ships per day of freight to Britain" it took a convoy 15 days to make a round trip of dropping supplies. "The British population's food demand per day needs only four ships to fulfil." That was given two kilograms of food per person per day, a near-luxurious amount in wartime, for the 40 million people in Britain. "An additional fifty freighters are being built as we speak, and Canada has 3000 aircraft of the V-F-1938A model (all produced in the six months since Austria and Germany united by rapid-production techniques SI invented and patented) to throw into battle if need be, with enough air crews to man the planes." In practice, if stationed at an airbase, an Aviation Brigade had enough support staff to support up to 800 fighters at the base without much trouble, thanks to their vehicles. However, on the move each could only sustain operations of the 320 directly attached aircraft. "Training and doctrine is going well and our weapons development is proceeding just fine."

"How are we in terms of warships?"

"We have sixty-some Corvettes, thirty-one Frigates currently in commission, two out of six Destroyers completed, and the carriers you know about, half a dozen Escort Carriers on the slips, with three Light Carriers and another Medium Carrier being assembled in BC. The Prairies are getting their fair share of new jobs thanks to the flight training schools and such, and I don't need to tell you about the Atlantic and Eastern Canada." The last three Light Carriers were going to be laid down when the current ones were done fitting out and headed out to sea for final testing. Of course, the workers would be given a week-long paid vacation between the bouts of work.

King nodded, it was the same report he'd gotten form his other ministers on progress that morning. The economy was beginning to come back to life as Ontario and Quebec pitched in with ores and other resources, along with non-grain foods for the workers, the east coast working in shipyards, and the west coast doing the same. The Prairies could be better, but London was refusing to buy Canadian wheat at the price Canadian farmers demanded—somewhat higher than the going rate—and it didn't seem like the growth of Canada as a possible ally was helping. In fact, King had the feeling Britain was starting to grow wary of Canada or something similarly stupid. If it was Churchill he would have sent the man a scalding telegram and the matter would have been resolved quickly, but Chamberlain was not as decisive or blunt as Churchill, being more of a statesman. "Good, then we have enough ships and escorts to fight another Atlantic battle, prepare yourself, General, Germany will not stop there, and Daladier agrees." Angry letters to Daladier had come back apologetic saying the French Parliament would have ousted him had he taken the hard line. However, he did tell them what he told Britain, that Hitler's ambitions made Napoleon's pale in comparison and that Germany was out to get Poland and Romania, and when it got the wheat and oil it needed it would turn on the West.

_Oh, so THAT was why I got a sudden contract for 3000 V-F-1937Bs, with spare parts and ammunition, to be shipped to France…_ Those were the best aircraft Shepard Industries was offering for export, and it would take her N-TF-1937A transports only one run by one ship to carry across given the crate-style packing option (the steel rods and plates forming the outside parts of the crates were used as the floor of the craft and the main wing support structure). "Aye sir, we'll be on it creating a decent strategic plan immediately."

King nodded tiredly "Thank you, Miss Shepard… I shall look forward to our next meeting, and to the eventual downfall of the dictators. After all, the night is long that never finds the day…"

* * *

><p><em>Rome, March 12, 1939<em>

It wasn't long before the rest of Czechoslovakia was invaded by Germany and Britain and France both began to prepare for war, however while that was happening, Hannah was engaged in other activities… At the coronation of the Pope Pius XII, Hannah met the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Urbsys, and engaged him in conversation. "I hear Germany has been making threats regarding the Memel Territory, Shepard Industries has enough heavy warships and land units to counter that threat." She said to him quietly at the dance the dignitaries were in after the coronation was over "I am authorized to extend an offer of help to your country in warding off German attentions."

She knew that Lithuania would be invaded by Germany regardless, however, later was better, and besides, she could get good money out of the deal, it was better than letting the Germans get their paws on it. She spent the night in Urbsys' suite, speaking in whispered tones about the terms of the contract that she had persuaded the man to agree to in the event that Germany chose to be aggressive. "As long as you can delay for at least four days, we can be on-site and ready to beat back the Germans if need be." She had instructed the man, who could do nothing but agree since he'd gotten vague threats from Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, before the coronation. 1.5 million US dollars (i.e. 1.7 million Canadian dollars) or nine million Lithuanian Litas worth was not an absurd price for national freedom and a region that held upward of 110 million Litas worth of industry as of 1939, even if diesel and gasoline fuel fees came extra. The hiring of 2000-some vehicles including over 500 "Light Tanks" guaranteed in the contract (All of Shepard Industries First Division) and two Battle Cruisers, plus five Heavy Cruisers and ten Destroyers, was a, if not dream, at least very good deal.

Of course, Hannah had had to explain to Urbsys that her "Destroyers" displaced 25000 tons and had main armaments of six 300mm cannons, plus six torpedo tubes, and that her frigates had six 200mm guns each in addition to four torpedo tubes. THAT had been when the man pounced on her contract offer, which was actually designed to squeeze out as much money as possible from the country, but he didn't need to know that his country would eventually be doomed anyhow with Hitler on one side and Stalin on the other.

* * *

><p><em>Klaipeda, March 21, 1939<em>

As predicted, Ribbentrop had issued his threats, but only on the fifteenth when the man met with Urbsys, and thus they had had a week to consider. In the next six days, First and Third Divisions had been loaded onto transports and they began moving across the Atlantic at 30 knots, somewhat higher than economy, but nowhere near the maximum of about 47 to 50 knots for the warships. They had entered the port of Klaipeda on the twentieth and offloaded their troops, who immediately scurried off and occupied camouflaged positions two kilometres behind the German-Lithuanian border. Then the warships had taken up positions in the port as the transports with a couple corvettes guarding them heading further up the Baltic to drop anchor near Stockholm, just to be safe.

Only moments after the effectively smoke-less funnels of the squat, stable transports and corvettes had vanished over the horizon to the north, radar contacts were picked up to the west and the guns of the fleet turned that way as ships turned their bows toward the entrance of the harbour, torpedo room crews ready and on the alert. Hannah watched all this from the bridge of the first N-ED-1938A (Destroyer) before heading below decks to the more armoured Combat Information Center in the main hull of the ship. The German ships were eventually identified by telescopes, and preparations were made to give them a warm welcome if needed… even if only the forward batteries were firing, the torpedoes would be enough to smash the enemy. Unfortunately and fortunately for the Germans, it was thoroughly unnecessary as they did it themselves.

More specifically, the pocket-battleship _Admiral Graf Spee_ rammed the ass of the _Deutschland_ as it kind of… wiggled… in shock at seeing larger ships with bigger guns pointed at the German ships. The two pocket-battleships had six 280mm guns each, the N-EF-1938As had six 300mm guns each, and the "Destroyers" displaced about twice as much "empty" (no cargo or ballast water) as the German ships thanks to thick armour protection. They were also able to outrun their opponents by 19 knots (47 vs. 28) if in a straight-line chase, with no ballast water or loaded cargo. Even when fully loaded, the Destroyers could still chase down their foes by a margin of seven knots. Sure, their secondary gun batteries were inferior in size (but not number), but their torpedoes could snap the enemy's keel reliably and fairly easily if need be.

In the meantime, while the stand-off (and Hitler talking about proper navigation to the captain of the _Graf Spee_) was happening, Lithuania's government was changing, the Cabinet being replaced with a more active one. Political squabbling was still running rampant and it showed no signs of self-repair, unlike Spain, which was now running fairly smoothly under a Republican government personally hammered into shape by Hannah, but that was irrelevant. It wasn't like she could expect Lithuania to last long enough to squeeze more money out of if Germany launched an attack when her troops weren't around.

The final stand-off in the port had one Brigade of Mechanized Infantry, two Destroyers, five Frigates, and ten Corvettes on the SI side. They were arrayed against two German Pocket-Battleships, three Cruisers, eight Destroyers, twenty-four Torpedo Boats and four fleet tenders. Overall, Shepard Industries held the advantage, with their many secondary weapons i.e. dual 40mm gun turrets and support from the ground troops, especially the availability of howitzer support. Hannah made her first broadcast "We meet again, Herr Hitler."

Hitler ground his teeth together for a second before speaking through his translator, Rommel had been asking for panzer command duty but had agreed to only take the job when invading France "Miss Shepard… to what do I owe this honour?"

"My PMC has been hired to protect the peace of this port and the independence of this country. Surely you understand, it is merely business after all. Now, I would like to kindly ask you to leave, or do you wish to compare more than ten inches of armour to your own plating?"

Hitler grit his teeth when Admiral Raeder informed him that the _Deutschland_ had a maximum of 140mm armour on the turret faces, and that the hull belt was only 80mm or so thick, not able to compete with the heavy protection of the enemy. He couldn't afford a straight-up fight, and it was rather obvious that one false move here could result in his ships and he being caught in a hailstorm of heavy shells at what was point-blank range for the heavy naval guns. They were, after all, no more than three kilometres apart. "Fine, I will back off… for now."

After the one-week term of the contract was over (Hannah had signed for only one week if war did not break out, but still, renting multiple heavy warships and a 20,000-person ground army for a week at that rate was quite decent), Hannah began to sail home, having gotten reliable intelligence that Hitler was currently looking at something else to conquer. Lithuania would be free for a few more years after Hannah intimidated Hitler into turning back and managed to secure a treaty about the treatment of the people of the Memel Region…

Besides, she'd managed to make a bit over 1 million Canadian dollars in profit comfortably, that was always good. It was when her ships neared England on their way back that Hannah made a snap decision based on recent occurrences and news. Hitler had diverted his Wehrmacht forces to conquer and occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia, so she would station herself in England if possible and watch for changes in Europe.

Her personal report to King once she got home was, however, "Unfortunately a certain chamber-pot… I mean -lain…" That had given King a nice laugh "learnt of my defiance of Germany and still didn't want to lend me harbour space, even though he was preparing for war by this point." King was quite happy that the venture had funded itself as well as earned quite a bit of profit (the Lithuanians had been responsible for fuel fees after all), but that was beside the point.

* * *

><p><em>September 1, 1939<em>

When war finally rolled around, Canada was the power by far the most ready for it. The only problem was that, at least for now, it was a Phony War as Germany took all of Poland into its Reich, the Soviets having built a large defence line and having a non-aggression pact to boot, signed when the Germans finished conquering Poland, though everyone knew it was just a piece of paper, the Soviets were adopting defensive posture for now. Canada was not joining the war immediately out of political considerations, but Hannah's offer of immediate military support by Shepard Industries to France was turned down… because Daladier had been replaced by Renault as the French Prime Minister. As predicted, Germany captured all the countries between itself and the USSR, though the USSR annexed the Baltic Countries.

Hannah was busy cursing her bad luck with Renault when a communiqué arrived that Finland had as she predicted refused territorial demands by the Soviets. She was overjoyed and immediately sent a telegram asking if aid was wanted at a fairly reasonable price to hold the Finnish border. She made allusions to her Spanish successes and explained how in the cold of winter her forces could navigate swamps with their armoured vehicles safely and fight well even in the complicated terrain of Finland, though they would mostly have to try to stick to combat zones. That she didn't mention, merely that she could encircle and pound enemy forces to dust as her tanks had done in Spain against captured Republican vehicles (which were Soviet models).

She also had a new tank gun configuration, namely the A-WTC-75-60 anti-tank gun, mounted in a different turret that used the same mount. A-T-1936s fitted with these heavier turrets were designated A-T-1936Bs. The gun had completed development and testing in 1938 due to one misfiring accident in 1937 forcing the design to be heavily scrutinized and fine-tuned. Then Light Tanks were universally refitted with the new turrets, other than some of those belonging to Aviation Brigades for AA duty, as those were the only formations with inadequate numbers of APCs for high-volume AA fire. It would be good to fight the newest Soviet tanks with the gun and see how effective it was. Sure, it was a risk and some of her men might die, but it was a calculated risk and their armour was thick anyhow. The Soviet Purge of the past years had severely weakened the Red Army, so it was about as effective as a drunk with a hammer, whereas her men were a scalpel.

It would be an interesting war, that was for sure, and it wasn't like France and Britain were friendly to hiring her PMC, i.e. The Canadian Army, to do their work at the moment. Hell, they were even trying to protect their own industries and Britain proposed a big flight training thing where they would provide the aircraft and Canada would foot the bill. King had shot it down instantly, demanding they use Canadian-made aircraft to save the British resources. Needless to say, that sold quite well with the media, creating jobs in Canada and saving Britain and France resources was a big media plus, even though the main underlying theme was telling the British that the Statute of Westminster was worth something, which the British seemed to have forgotten. King, like most everyone else in Parliament, was "fucking SICK" (To quote the Defence Minister) of being dictated to by the British like they weren't a separate country.

There was just one wee problem in the form of the background of a certain Major General of Shepard Industries… "What do you mean you don't think Gunter von Esling should be in command of a Division anymore? I believe he can command a Corps or Army if need be." Hannah thundered at the Defence Minister.

"Come on General Shepard, he's German, GERMAN, do you think he'd fight his countrymen with full efficiency?" The man spread his arms in exasperation.

"He'd fight well enough, and so what if he's German? He's just as Canadian as you and I are, he was BORN HERE God damn it!" Hannah growled back. It would take another hour of wrangling before von Esling's job was no longer at risk, but later on Canada would realize just how much it was totally worth it.

* * *

><p>AN: Feel free to point out weaknesses (do not even try to deny Nanking, or the souls of about 400,000 people who died there will hunt you down), and just saying from where I'm standing: those seeds are pretty bad huh? I wouldn't want to see what sort of future will come of this…

REVIEW!


	10. Blood, Ice and Steel

A/N: Again, numbers here are as accurate as possible, and history is mostly semi-true for quite a while. BY THE WAY, THE WWII AND WWIII TECHNOLOGIES AND NUMBERS WILL ENTIRELY BE REASONABLE! I have to do a lot of research, and I try to make it as accurate as I can, right down to round types for the T-40 (to us, T-34)'s F-34 gun penetration capacity, which is absolutely inferior to the A-WTC-75-60A thanks to a much shorter barrel.

Reasons for failing to protect Czechoslovakia and Poland will be included in Ch 11, as there is no space for reflection on the past here, duelling the USSR isn't that easy. Well, actually, it is, with those stupid political commissars, which Timoshenko tends to ignore (he'll do better, at least be able to repulse attacks, compared to the other Soviet commanders).

I don't know what the hell is wrong with FFN, but most parts with italics lacked spaces on upload, sorry, but there are too many for me to be sure I got to change all of them, I don't guarantee it. This is highly unusual, I think...

* * *

><p>Chapter 10: Blood, <strong>Ice<strong> and _Steel_

_Helsinki, __Finland, __November __30, __1939_

Hannah's troops had just finished off-loading before the message came through the telegraph wires that the Soviets had launched their anticipated attack. Immediately after organizing themselves in Helsinki, two divisions of Shepard Industries, now including the Second and Third Aviation Brigades, totalling 40000 men and women, began to move eastward. The aircraft carried by the Light Carriers _Nova __Scotia_, _New __Brunswick_ and _Manitoba_ were taking advantage of the extremely close front line to fly combat support. That had been promised early into negotiation of the 10-million-pound sterling (about 20 million Canadian dollars) contract which represented Finland's only hope of getting a powerful, well-equipped, highly professional fighting force to hammer the Russians back with at once. Each division had one Light Tank, one Mechanized, two Motorized and one Aviation Brigade nowadays, totalling 320 V-F-1938A all-purpose aircraft, 1248 A-APC-1935As, 105 A-T-1936As (aviation brigade only, for additional AA support), 708 A-T-1936Bs (anti-tank turret installed), and 1515 5-ton trucks (for infantry, mortars, artillery, carrying planes around, carrying supplies nomad-style, etc.) for 20,000 people.

All three divisions put together had 960 planes, 3744 APCs, 315 Anti-Air Tanks, 2124 Tanks, and 4545 Trucks. Needless to say, with Finland's poor infrastructure, the armoured columns, which could easily have made it to the front in five hours across even gravel roads, took about seven to arrive. Well, First Division did. Second Division was rumbling northeast to the north side of Lake Ladoga to deal with Soviet advances there while Third Division had, under direct command of Hannah, been re-embarked on its ships to be transported to Oulu to battle the Russians in the north. It was the more challenging project, which was why Hannah took it and left the other two fronts to Gunter von Esling. Those were relatively micromanagement-oriented like what Gunter needed to study more, this northern frontier was not.

The transports had carried as much supplies as Shepard Industries forces could possibly hope to use for now. They'd brought 25 N-TF-1937As, which meant a good 500,000 tons of food, clothes, fuel (the largest part of the load by far), parts and ammunition for the Private Military Company's 60,000 soldiers. It is to be noted that though the vehicles took a lot of mass, SI warships also carried huge amounts of cargo (A Destroyer typically ran with up to 12000 tons of cargo), and it made up the difference. They had enough supplies to sustain 50 days of extreme-intensity operations… and God help them if they stayed any longer because the contract only specified fifty days of operations beginning December 1st, 1939 and ending January 19, 1940. On the ten-day mark Hannah planned to bring in another convoy of transports with more supplies just in case, and be ready to continue the contract if she couldn't get the job done fast enough (i.e. get out through Scandinavia after the Baltic freezes over).

The contract terms had included a maximum 40% bonus if the Russians were eliminated from Finland within the 50-day contract period and sued for peace. Of course, the actual terms had some more calculations involved than that, but that was what it came to. If the contract had to be renewed, the Finns would be demanding a somewhat lower price, or so she was told. She couldn't let them take it too low, since her ground soldiers' wages amounted to 120,000 Canadian dollars a day. Though the Canadian government footed half the pay bill for this expedition, she wanted to be able to hand out bonuses to soldiers for performance and to allot some support money for the families of the fallen. Some people thought she paid her men and women too little, but since room, board, clothing and other fees were all taken by the PMC, it wasn't a bad deal as far as jobs went. Add the maintenance costs of the forces' equipment, counting fuel, and she would need 200,000 dollars a day to maintain her ground force and ships, 100,000 after removing the part Canada had shouldered. She had offered the Finns a very sweet deal (though demanded they handle fuel fees for the ships and half of all fuel fees of her vehicles) considering her company's fighting power…

By full dark on the 30th of November Major General Gunter von Esling's First Division was near the Mannerheim Line on the Karelian Isthmus and had patched through radios to the various division and corps command groups of the Finns. Second Division, which he was accompanying, was heading northeast toward the second Soviet attack area north of Lake Ladoga. At midnight, the Soviet advance on the Karelian Isthmus had halted for the night. Shepard Industries troops had been taking advantage of their vehicles' sealable nature and more or less insulating air filters to stay warm and nap, preparing for a night-time battle. They had brought with them Winter Uniforms and Winter Lube on this venture, with white clothes and white paint schemes for the vehicles after the old layer was stripped off (multiple layers of dried paint were a fire hazard).

Having left Helsinki in the morning, the men had, other than the drivers, rested for combat. At around midnight, Second Division sent the first message: Reached Objective Area, Advance and push back the Soviets. The Brigadier in command of First Division surveyed his forces one last time before following orders against the Soviet forces camped out in the open in summer tents, their vehicles still painted the hideously obvious summer paint scheme.

At a bit over 1500 meters range, about a third of their maximum accurate range against stationary targets, the tanks got clearance to open fire. The night lit up with machine-gun fire (though horribly inaccurate at such range), with the occasional tracer shell, and the cannon rounds smashed Soviet tanks like they didn't exist. Caught by surprise, the Soviet armoured units only got off a few rounds, and they fell short or bounced off the 80mm (sloped) armour of the A-T-1936Bs. Their own armour, a mere 10 to 25 millimetres thick, didn't stand a chance as the 75mm shells came knocking, fired from long-barrelled and therefore high-velocity guns. The rounds were relatively light compared to many others of similar calibre, but they were fast, and speed mattered more for kinetic energy than mass. Besides, they were heavy enough to stay relatively well on trajectory even with extreme winds and such, and had good range, and that was what mattered.

Then the push began in the soft moonlight, shining from almost due east, the Soviets had already gotten five kilometres inside the Finnish border, but now, those same five kilometres would become a kill-zone. At the very least, it would be until the T-40 tanks could get to the front. (A/N: This is the T-34 under a new name, more indicative of year of commission) Soviet troops did their best to fight, including use of Molotov cocktails, but the wise precaution of engine vent covers and such (built in before the Spanish Civil War involvement after reports of use of the weapons against tanks) kept the burning liquids from doing much more than scorch the paint. They were mown down, run over, or otherwise terminated. Attempts to shove crowbars into the big Christie-suspension road wheels failed as they were spinning too fast to do so, and the occasional tree branch simply snapped anyways under the power of the engines, or were dragged along by the vehicle. After all, not all road wheels had to work for the vehicle to keep moving, in fact, only half on each side had to work to maintain economy speed (though that was the new maximum speed, 36 vs. 60 km/h was not favourable for mobility, but it would do).

The tracks had stayed at the 500mm tracks, since the lengths of the vehicles allowed for good weight distribution, but they still handled fine. Sure they were bad for fuel economy on say roads but they were all-purpose and highly efficient at cross-country compared to narrower tracks in other tanks. The tank line stopped several hundred meters from the Soviet line and mowed down anyone who tried to attack. Those running away were spared for now, as they would disrupt enemy morale for later, and the Code of Conduct forbade it anyways as long as the fleeing men had thrown down their weapons.

Mortar trucks followed up behind the armoured line to bombard the trenches of those who hadn't tried to run (the Soviets shot many of their own runners) at close range with a furious hail of shells. With eighty 60mm mortars supporting each ground brigade, that was a total of three hundred and twenty mortars of First Division pouring down reasonably accurate fire into the Russian trenches. Fragmentation shells were used to achieve maximum kills before the tanks smashed through the hastily-dug trenches and shot everyone who didn't throw down their arms and run away or surrender.

The field quieted for a moment before the whistling of artillery rang in the ears of the tank crews, who quickly loosened their formation and began a retreat under orders. Spurts of snow and dirt erupted from the dirt around them, and several tanks were blown up by heavy artillery shells before they got back under tree cover, and one more went up in a catastrophic kill after that. Ten minutes later, counter-battery fire roared overhead as SI artillery, a total of fifty-four truck-mounted 100mm pieces, opened fire in sync. The Soviet artillery positions had been sighted by pilots who'd radioed back coordinates to the trucks that had carried their aircraft around. The Aviation Brigade was in constant contact with the artillery pieces, their vehicles deployed defensively to protect themselves and the improvised airstrip they'd crushed out over a frozen swamp to fly close air support from.

The 100mm guns could hit the closer positions just fine, but twenty A-F-1938As were wheeling overhead of the Aviation Brigade as ten more lifted off and they settled into formation for a bombing strike, using 400kg high explosive bombs instead of armour-piercing. They flew south over the heads of the ground troops—including two drivers who had been rescued from the destroyed tanks—on bombing missions against the longer-ranged Soviet guns. These were mostly heavy guns that were not easily moved around, especially when under air attack, unlike Shepard Industries artillery trucks which could fire on the move if need be (though that would require point-blank range and not much need for accuracy, say against a large infantry formation).

Up north of Lake Ladoga, Second Division was sitting there waiting for the Eight Army of the USSR to attack. Von Esling had talked with the Finnish commanders about allowing the Soviets to advance 40 kilometres before cutting them off, and they'd agreed. Von Esling then issued the same order to his southern forces, telling them to retreat somewhat from the border. Fortunately he'd already told them that all airfields were to be behind the Mannerheim Line, so that wasn't an issue, and with the short distance aircraft could fly as many as 10 or 12 sorties before really needing to refuel, even more sorties were fine with auxiliary fuel tanks.

* * *

><p>AN: Today's Armoured Brigade takes about 8 million USD to maintain for a year. Therefore three DIVISIONS of troops even then demanding that much for a contract is nowhere near high, in fact, only the supreme reliability of the gear, the gain of good political connections, and the self-supply of machine parts at low cost makes the business worthwhile for such a low fee.

* * *

><p><em>Oulu, <em>_Finland, __December __1, __1939_

By noon on December 1st, Hannah's forces had already organized themselves in Oulu and the Soviet Ninth Army was headed toward them by the main road, the "Rat Road" as the troops termed it. Fortunately the low mechanization of the Soviet forces meant she could far outrun them and meet them a reasonable distance from the border at her leisure, then surround and pound them into surrender quickly, and figure out ways to inflict such damage upon the USSR forces that they would want to sue for peace without gaining a millimetre of Finnish soil. There was also the problem of the probable army in the north which would sooner or later be trying to steal Finland's only arctic port, Petsamo.

Fortunately, recon trucks had shown that the Soviet army seemed to have bogged down with supply problems, and so Hannah sent the 3rd Mechanized Brigade with the 4th Battalion of 3rd Aviation to harass the enemy and keep them from getting rest or additional supplies together while she ploughed north to attack the Soviet forces. New reports that had reached her stated the Soviets had begun the war BEFORE the Finns had agreed to the contract, two full weeks ago. Well, the Finns were beginning to pay for not hiring her earlier as Petsamo was being threatened even now. Though the Soviet offense was fairly slow thanks to inclement weather, her machines were not thanks to the thinning trees and beginning of the tundra. Her tanks had far wider tracks and more track surface (though still more ground pressure) than current Soviet vehicles, as well as far superior speed and drive-trains, but that could change, which meant she had to run her tanks and trucks north as quickly as possible to engage the Soviet Fourteenth Army near the Arctic Coast while Petsamo could still be held. Then she would smash them across the border and surround them before pounding the entire army into surrender if she could. However, Hannah was not retarded, and knew that with her 15000 or so current troops the best she could encircle and smash was about two divisions or 40000 men completely safely without sustaining intolerable casualties.

Wisely, though, the Finns had kept most of their forces in the south, not falling for the distraction, and were fighting delaying attrition actions in the north, using of all things trench warfare still. The falling tree density as they ploughed north enabled Hannah to move quickly though, unlike the Soviets who were keeping their tanks with their infantry apparently. The best thing for Hannah was that she didn't have any non-motorized infantry and Winter Lubricant (S-LW-1938A) was guaranteed to run perfectly fine in the worst Yukon winters AND able to handle temperatures up to late spring (a good 15 degrees Celsius) without becoming too thin to work at full efficiency. It was mostly due to the addition of lots of Cholesterol to the formula to help regulate consistency at low and high temperatures alike.

While her forces were rolling north, Hannah was frowning at a large map of Europe that she had in front of her next to the globe. Why did the USSR choose to defend instead of attack? Weren't Nazism and Communism opposing ideologies that couldn't stand each other? This was beyond weird… maybe Stalin wanted to sit back and laugh as Germany bit off more than it could chew by trying to take on the world? That seemed like the most plausible option. Why should the USSR waste its strength attacking a Germany that was doomed to failure anyways when it could just watch and reap the rewards itself? Just what was Stalin up to?

_I __might __as __well __be __asking __whatever __deities __are __out __there __just __how __long __I __expect __to __live._ She thought bemusedly. After all, her great-grandparents, well, the ones from long-lived lines, which meant the three who were still alive when she was born, had only started dying when she was in her twenties, and her family tended to have a generation time of around 40 years. They had lasted to 140 years of age before dying… and still looked only in their late 40s when they died. Now she looked about 20, but was actually 39… and had no idea about her own life expectancy. Of course, she noted humorously, as she poked her left breast lightly and felt the firm flesh, her ancestors tended to sag minimally, if at all. It was very weird, but if there was a deity out there, then Hannah would have liked to say thank you.

She did not have a clue that said deity was putting a negligible fraction of its processing capacity on monitoring her and did its equivalent of laughing right then and there.

One thing was certain; she would live a damned long time and enjoy her life, which she was doing now. She always wanted to be able to make a difference in the world, and this Private Military Company was her way of doing it. She hated losing soldiers, but accepted it as due course in battering back the bullies of the world. After that Hannah went back to doing additional schematics and calculations in the passenger compartment of her commandeered APC. It would be a while before they would arrive at the designated Strike Jump-Off-Point, so she could work. There was one thing that really worried her, a report of a new gun in use by the Germans, used in Poland as anti-air, artillery and anti-tank. The report put the gun at 88mm calibre and able to punch through even the thickest tank armour available today. That was worrying, since she believed that the best anti-tank weapon, one that could match a tank's mobility, firepower and protection, was a better tank or armoured tank destroyer (aka a tank with a fixed gun).

Sure, her own 100mm howitzers could be used for direct-fire anti-tank duty to carve through the heaviest tanks, but that was not a common role as they were too exposed, too unprotected… _Why __don__'__t __I __install __them __on __a __tank __chassis? __Right, __then __they__'__d __just __be __siege __tanks __of __sorts, __because __those __guns __are __easily __going __to __be __the __best __tank __guns __around. __But __they __aren__'__t __that __cheap __or __easy __to __mass-produce, __compared __to __some __other __platforms, __plus __it__'__s __more __mobile __as __a __truck __and __has __a__ smaller __profile__… __maybe __I__'__ll __consider __it __another __time, __then __again __by __the __time __I __consider __it __I__'__ll __probably __have __a __tank __gun __that__'__s __better __anyhow. __Howitzer __rounds __are __designed __for __artillery __work, __not __anti-tank, __and __the __barrel __pressure __and __wear __aren__'__t __nearly __as __severe __as __that __for __a __tank __gun__…_

She set about beginning the design of such a gun during the 18-hour drive (her vehicles were all stuffed as much as possible with extra fuel containers to be able to make the run as a whole body of armoured fury). _First, __we __need __a __better __calibre__… __and __a __long __bore __just __like __good __guns __have __for __good __range __and __muzzle __velocity__…_

* * *

><p><em>North <em>_of __Lake __Ladoga, __Finland, __December __2, __1939_

The Soviet forces were beginning to gain confidence as they advanced further and further into Finland without resistance. Perhaps the Finns had not thought to deploy forces up here, the political commissar to the 139th Rifle Division thought cockily in the watery light of the early afternoon, as they reached the 35-kilometre mark, driving past snow drifts that had built up from last night's blizzard. Perhaps they would be able to strike straight into the heart of Finland and take the capital. Sure, rumour had it that the Finns had hired the same mercenary band that had turned the tide of the Spanish Civil War and the southern offensive had experienced huge amounts of trouble with an armoured force, but they couldn't be everywhere at once, could they?

His question was answered for him as, when the 139th Rifle Division heard noises of tanks coming from behind them, many of the men turned to take a look. Most of them did a double-take when they realized they were NOT looking at red stars but instead vaguely painted Maple Leafs bearing down on them from behind. They were moving slower than usual charging speeds of 30km/h because of the forest terrain and the need for not running head-first into trees, which would slow the column down, but it was still a bit daunting to see interminable shadows among the trees in the early dusk of winter up here. Eventually, having come to 1500 meters range, the tanks stopped, only having fired warning shots at men wheeling anti-tanks guns around, needless to say, said men stopped.

Then someone with a loudspeaker from somewhere close by blared in clear Russian "Those who surrender will not be harmed, if you wish to surrender, throw down your weapons and step toward the trees, away from the tanks! If your officers attempt to stop you, we will shoot them, do not fear, we repeat, we will not harm those who surrender. Anyone who attempts to attack the surrendered will be punished!"

The soldiers looked around nervously, especially at their officers. The commissar's eye bulged in fury at the soldiers manning the 76mm field cannons "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? ATTACK!" He roared, and the nearest battery immediately obeyed, firing shells at the enemy tanks. The first shell hit a tree branch and veered off-course, and the second, a BR-350P Armour-Piercing shell, buried itself into the 100mm front armour of an A-T-1936B turret but did not penetrate. The next rounds in the volley struck home on the hulls of the tanks, but the F-34 76.2mm cannon could, even with BR-350A Armour-Piercing High Explosive ammunition, the best for long-range engagement then available, achieve only 61mm penetration on 1000m range. The front armour of T-1936s was, like on every other side except the top and turrets, 80mm thick. Using BR-350P shells at ranges under 700 or so meters could have yielded kills at good angles such as to the sides, but the front armour's extreme sloping made a point-blank-range shot mandatory.

Unlike the F-34, which had a barrel 42.5 calibres long, the A-WTC-75-60A was 60 calibres long, resulting in a much higher muzzle velocity and superior armour penetration using armour-piercing ammunition, but it also had better range and precision… That was why the first volley of the tank line took out most of the anti-tank guns. Most, because the few heavier artillery guns the Soviets had with them still managed to disable a few tanks with the shells punching through the front armour to be stopped by the engine block (in the front of the vehicle), which immediately shut down the fuel pump system and vented the blast via emergency vent systems, the crew being protected by 10mm of RHA holding the blast at bay. Some of the tanks had blown up from the shots actually penetrating far enough, but those were a mere few as the cannons of the rest bellowed back again and took out every heavy gun present.

The Soviet infantry tried to advance under tree cover to use satchel charges and Molotov Cocktails, but then the heretofore silent Finnish defence line opened up with a rather large number of machine guns. Many of the heavier machine guns had been removed from the 5-ton trucks and put in good positions with adequate camouflage and spare ammunition, and at less than 150 meters range in some places, well… It took surprisingly long—15 whole minutes—before the last 200-some members of the approximately 19000 man 139th Rifle Division surrendered and were secured by Finnish forces to be taken to POW camps. The Soviets, with a motley assortment of winter gear, were issued thick winter blankets stored in the trucks for those who answered affirmative to the question of "Are you cold?" They were given warm water (the dynamo attached to every vehicle engine was good for SOMETHING after all) and cans of SI Field Rations Variant 1 (the various food cans were termed Variants 1 through 10) to eat. They were transported in the backs of the 5-ton trucks toward the POW camp that had been set up by the Finns outside Helsinki. It had been part of the contract agreement that Soviet POWs be treated with decency and respect by the Finns, to be released later when Shepard Industries managed to negotiate the release of prisoners with the Soviets.

Gunter von Esling had just sprung a trap he would use a select few times in the future, namely burying his tanks in snow and disguising their exhausts and air intakes as tree branches and often opening to the air in bushes. Those tanks had been the occasional snow drifts the Soviets had been walking around for kilometres… and they'd paid for not walking into any of the "snow drifts". Now that they'd smashed the first offensive wave of the Soviets up here, they could expect a few days' respite. However, considering the dire supply situation of the Finns in ammunition and such… the SI troops would have to do most of the fighting before more could be shipped in for the Finns. With the Baltic threatening to freeze over by late December… von Esling routed his report through the radio and telegram lines to Hannah, and soon got the reply of "Request as many shipments of supplies as you need, you have operational command of the southern forces, Major General, until I return, good luck." She had wired the same orders to the ships in Helsinki.

* * *

><p><em>Baltic Sea, West of Finland, December 2, 1939<em>

Von Esling immediately sent the eighteen supply ships left in Helsinki harbour orders to prepare to depart for more supplies to be hauled across the sea from Canada. The orders included authorization for them to bring one of the attendant Destroyers (they had brought three of the Destroyers, the newer ones that had not been long-range-tested in the Lithuania contract) and some of the smaller escorts along. Surprisingly, by the noon, they had been rejoined by the seven that had been in Oulu, ready to sail in a standard convoy formation. The reunion included the Destroyer and other escorts that had gone north, and they were by evening (though night had long since fallen in the winters of northern latitudes) somewhere far west of Helsinki harbour, in a protective ring formation around the three Light Carriers, _Nova __Scotia_, _New __Brunswick_ and _Manitoba_.

The three N-CL-1938A Light Carriers could muster a total of 180 aircraft at once, 60 from each, though if planes were "spotted" i.e. parked on-deck they could carry one more squadron of 12 on each. That was however considered too risky and made the thinner armoured flight deck pointless anyhow, so it was not used. They were turned into the wind to launch aircraft more efficiently, this time with most planes loaded down by torpedoes, a total of two squadrons per carrier or 72 planes. There was another squadron per carrier loaded out with two 400-kg armour-piercing bombs each and the last of the four departing squadrons per carrier, 36 more aircraft, were flying escort fighter duty.

The fleet split up, the convoy and its escorts headed west-southwest toward the Baltic Sea proper, so as to pass through the straits near Copenhagen and head back to Canada for another ultra-heavy supply run, and it would be a RUN. It was expected that they would be able to get two or three convoys' worth of supplies over here before late December saw the Baltic freezing over. After all, Hannah had sent another telegram through her contacts for another convoy, with the last untested Destroyer, at least one Escort Carrier, and a number of smaller escorts, to be dispatched from Halifax as soon as possible. German subs were on the prowl in the Atlantic, and though the run from Halifax to Helsinki the first time had cost the Germans three U-boats with nothing lost for Shepard Industries except two metal skirt armour plates and some patch repairs, it was still a risk, though a calculated one… Hannah hadn't been notified about the freezing of the Baltic until she had arrived in Oulu after all.

The 144 aircraft had split up like the fleet did, with one ships' worth headed toward each of three targets, Tallinn, Paldiski, and Liepaja. Those were the three points where the Soviet Baltic Fleet was concentrated, with one capital ship and a fleet of attendant escorts in each. Tallinn and Paldiski had one battleship each while Liepaja held only a heavy cruiser, but sinking those would shave the surface enemy presence to destroyers and torpedo boats only. Of course, the submarines in the area could prove a problem, but the hope was to nail as many of them as possible with bombs that were guaranteed to be more than enough to sink a sub with a hit or even a near miss. Considering the extensive training of aviators (from the program Canada was still conducting even now) it wouldn't be too hard to do the job. Even if there weren't any subs to be found, the bombers could still attack fuel tanks they spotted and enemy columns, ideally armoured columns, shore batteries, and anti-aircraft guns. Worst came to worst, any port facilities could be bombed, such as blowing up cranes and other heavy machinery, and trains that were _obviously__military_ could also be immolated if need be.

Needless to say, the venture was an affair of win some, lose some. The two Corvettes sent to trail after each group to pick up any downed aviators managed to get most of the survivors, but there were still a significant number of losses. The raid on Paldiski, the closest target, had gone off without a hitch, the planes screaming down out of the sky on unsuspecting targets. The torpedo-bombers had led the formation by thirty seconds, levelling out and banking up just a little before releasing their torpedoes. Fitted with wooden snap-off wings that would allow for more stable flight and shallow entry, the twenty-four torpedoes splashed into the water and drew straight pencil lines through the harbour, eight headed for the battleship from the same side and one or two at each of the six destroyers then in port, plus several aimed at obviously military tenders, minesweepers, and other small craft. The dive-bomber flight came down like a great hammer, moments after the tremendous torpedo and ship magazine explosions washed over the fleeing torpedo bombers. They dropped their bombs, two pairs of planes lining up over the sub pens and the rest headed to bomb the fuel tanks and possible ammunition warehouses in the area. They were shaken badly by the shocks of the huge explosions that sent mushroom clouds soaring into the sky, but in the end the whole flight from the _Manitoba_ managed to get home intact, though several had been scorched or damaged by flaming debris. The harbour had been thoroughly wrecked, with the seven main surface vessels all sunk and ablaze, and five of eight targeted subs torn in halves lying on the bottom of the harbour. The dry dock and fuel oil storage tanks were also lighting the night up with their fires even after the initial explosions had died down.

The _Nova __Scotia_'s flight wasn't so lucky, a quick warning by way of the mushroom clouds to the west alerted the defenders at Tallinn enough to man their anti-aircraft guns in the twilight. That was just before the torpedo planes, flying at no higher than fifteen meters above the water, entered the port and launched their attack while the dive bombers came screaming down from overhead. The 85mm anti-aircraft guns present happened to be mostly pointed upward, at the time of the attack, and so two of the dive-bombers were blasted apart in mid-air before the AAA pieces were immolated by 400kg armour-piercing bombs. Smaller batteries managed to destroy one torpedo bomber by hitting it with enough rounds, but that did not deter the rest from turning the harbour into hell. Twenty-three N-WT-450-1000A torpedoes were dropped with the "nose-up technique" which would result in the torpedo cutting smoothly into the water. The wings broke off on entry, and the torpedo gained a relatively shallow entry thanks to the skimming effect, which did not hurt aiming except in waves that were perpendicular in direction to the torpedo's path. In the relatively calm harbour, that wasn't an issue, so the "standard run" was not used, which was more suitable for combat on the high seas where depth wasn't an issue but skipping was.

The last harbour attack on Liepaja, by the aviators of the _New __Brunswick_, was the most hazardous with the ships already wary of an attack. Sweeping in from inland took the Soviets sufficiently by surprise that an oil tank farm went up in a series of explosions as the tanks were hit by four bombs from the lead bombers. That was before the other 10 tough V-F-1938A aircraft came through the fire and flames to begin attack runs. The torpedo bombers were hanging back for now, and wisely too as enemy fighters came diving down toward the bomber-configuration planes at a few hundred meters. Using dive flaps and sheer engine power the pilots went evasive while their rear gunners returned fire with dual machine guns. The somewhat lopsided dogfight was only turned by the SI fighters that had trailed behind and above the bombers joined in and freed up the bombers to continue their runs amidst increasing density of antiaircraft fire, which was ineffective as they weren't diving straight down the barrels of the guns in this port. However, one bomber had still been damaged and spun out of control, the gunner parachuting while the pilot, with a fatal hole the size of a dinner plate in his belly, tried to aim the burning plane at a dry dock, hoping to at least make his death mean something as he toggled the triggers on the bombs to ACTIVE. It didn't work as another round tore the front end of the plane completely off, sending pieces of the man spraying over the terrain while the bomb bay section, miraculously only damaged, crashed in the water right between two parked submarines.

Shepard Industries ordnance such as grenades, mines (future project), bombs, and depth charges, had guaranteed 80% high explosives in mass. It did NOT take much of a blast underwater to crack a submarine's hull, and even with the armour-piercing bombs, which were to detonate 0.1 seconds after impact, it meant 640 kg of high explosive. Both submarines were snapped effectively in half just aft of the conning towers and sank almost immediately as the parachuted gunner dragged himself out onto a pier, shivering from the near-freezing water and just laying on his back panting, glad he hadn't drowned. He would be found there by a search-and-rescue corvette, the same one that would feed three more torpedoes into the heavy cruiser which was severely listing but refused to sink from the two aerial torpedoes it had taken, apparently parking subs around a cruiser on the sides really helped shield it. The raids had all gone successfully according to Carrier Doctrine, and they had only lost 10 aircraft for the first wave.

The ship count of the Baltic Fleet had dropped overnight from two battleships, a heavy cruiser, 19 destroyers, 50 torpedo boats, 52 subs and various other vessels to 2 destroyers, 18 torpedo boats and 27 subs. The "overnight" part was thanks to a follow-up attack where the distance of targets was reversed. The _Manitoba_ got Liepaja, the _New __Brunswick_ got Paldiski, and the _Nova __Scotia_ still had Tallinn. Though not beneficial in terms of experience with terrain, it was good for a synchronized second attack so that Soviet fighters which were no doubt in the air now could not react in time to case-by-case calls for help. This time the four-squadron attack was divided into two bomber squadrons and two fighter squadrons on each sortie and cost Shepard Industries 11 aircraft (mostly from fighters as AA positions and ships had taken a good pounding already) but only 9 airmen/women. The total casualty count was 21 for the SI side, and the Soviets… well, as Hannah would say many years later, "Who knows how accurate the doctored Soviet reports really are?"

* * *

><p>AN: Note that at Pearl Harbour, the _Oklahoma_ took only 3 torpedoes to capsize, and the torpedoes used had slightly less explosives than these ones. In the first wave, the Japanese only lost 9 planes of 183, and that's without neutralizing the majority of American AA positions (among the first things Carrier Doctrine demands be suppressed by strafing or eliminated by bombs). The second wave of 171 planes lost 20 in an hour of attacking with ever-intensifying ground AAA. These raids took 15 minutes, if that, in terms of time over airspace of a port. The Soviets were more efficient than the Americans… either that or it's because the SI forces were spread out more. However, saturation attacks were still achieved with excellent and VERY PLAUSIBLE results.

* * *

><p><em>Northern Finland, December 3, 1939<em>

"If we want to force the Soviets into suing for peace because the war is too much of an embarrassment then we need to smash the 104th Division of the Soviets and take as many prisoners as we possibly can before they can even figure out what's going on, then head south." Hannah was lecturing her Brigadiers as they convened in her commandeered APC. They were holding a briefing about what had to be done next to stop the Soviets "The 112th or 88th, depending on how the Soviets divide their forces, will be headed north from here" She pointed at an area not far north of the "Rat Road" and gestured northward. "We need to be in position and in time to intercept them in two or three days." Then she brought up a more tactical-scale map "Our four current brigades are here." She circled a small area "Third Light Tank is here" that was the left wing of the crescent "Third Mechanized is here" That was the right wing "And Fifth and Sixth Motorized are here and here with what we have of Third Aviation with First LT. The enemy forces are here." She drew a small arc southeast of the city of Petsamo, threatening to surround the city "We will hit them here, here and here." That meant a general encirclement plan, typical of SI armoured warfare tactics on open ground "Simple tactical deployment, a loose wall of at least two ranks of Light Tanks followed by APCs, with Trucks at the core and mixed armoured units on all sides for cover." She stated simply, after all, whenever actual battles occurred, the largest remotely organized unit was company-strength, as beyond that things got too combined-arms for organization to matter too much, other than urban battles when platoons were assigned sectors and such. Usually they left urban battles to hitchhiking allied infantry units since they were too expensive for a PMC to afford comfortably in terms of trained personnel.

After the plan was laid out, it was put into motion as the columns began moving again. An hour after the end of the conference and some twenty kilometres north of where they had been, the winter-camouflaged vehicles were poised to move on the Soviet columns slogging north through the snow. SI doctrine did after all emphasize mobility in warfare, and most of the time that meant infantry didn't touch the ground, unless in defensive battles. This was NOT a defensive battle; it was a hammer to the back of the head of a force that didn't even suspect they would be there. Well, not so much a hammer to the back of the head as a crushing vice.

The howitzers stationed ten kilometres to the west fired first, followed by the Tanks and APCs rumbling up into view of the flanks of the Soviets. The first wave of fire caught the Soviets by surprise and inflicted horrendous casualties, but then the troops went for whatever cover in the forms of snow-banks, ditches and so on that they could find, throwing themselves flat to minimize targeting profiles. Unfortunately that didn't help them evade the strafing fighter craft flying close air support from above with their six forward-facing A-WMG-12.5-90A machine guns. Some fire tried to stab up at the planes, but they were too fast to target that easily and only received superficial damage thanks to self-sealing fuel tanks and armour plating warding off small-arms fire to the fuselage. Then the Soviets were distracted again by sniper fire from the camouflaged trucks parked on the hillsides, letting infantry fire out through the firing ports on one side. Though this meant less total firepower, the troops could fall back to reload without interrupting fire much and still allowing all the men to take turns shooting. The truck machine-guns stayed silent, since they would only be beacons for any heavier weapons the Soviets could bring to bear with their twinkling barrels. Of course, catching the Soviets by surprise with a gigantic armoured column where no hostile armour was expected meant that the Soviets didn't exactly have time to set up shop or even unhitch their heavier guns. Those actually capable of reliably disabling or destroying the T-1936s in one shot had been blown to shreds by the time the third volley of shells was fired from the tanks as they rumbled closer, to 500 meters range on the relatively flat ground, using a small crest of a ridge to deploy hull-down on the reverse slope and take advantage of their turrets' good gun elevation/depression to fire at the Soviets with impunity. Most of the bullets, the vast majority, missed, but enough rounds hit to begin wearing down the suppressed Soviet infantry as they did their best to find cover and fire back, their own armoured support reduced to blazing pyres in the first volley of 75mm armour-piercing shells.

The exercise in futility for the Soviets soon dissolved into a shambles with only one SI tank disabled (a broken track) by a random land mine it ran over as it approached the road. Searching revealed that there were Finnish anti-infantry and anti-tank mines near the roads so that any guerrilla tactics could afford a retreat and lead the Soviets into a minefield. "Wow… they couldn't have warned us beforehand?" Hannah had commented as she observed the crew patching the track back together. "The prisoners need to be shipped to the Helsinki POW Camp as soon as possible, but the Soviet Fourteenth Army hasn't been thoroughly crushed yet… let the Finns in Petsamo hold onto them for now, we can take them back after we're done crushing Fourteenth Army, or at least enough of it that the Soviets retreat from this front." That was not a difficult proposition: Blow up the fuel depots at Murmansk and wreck the equipment at the train station, plus blasting parts of the railroad tracks and any Red Army warehouses they could find would take Fourteenth Army out of the fight in a pinch, as resupply was difficult at best for the Soviets in winter, with the port and trains inoperable from bombing.

However, she had to consider the threat posed by Flak as well as the public relations disaster that would result if she actually sent her ground forces over the Soviet border. The obvious solution was a sneak air attack, taking advantage of the effectively permanent darkness and attacking at what was basically noon, the time least expected for an air attack. The current time, she noted on her watch as they finished securing the prisoners and sent them with 4th Motorized back down the line to Oulu, was… 1000 hours, excellent. Now to find a suitable LARGE frozen lake…

It took half an hour to find a suitable not-so-small lake, half an hour for the briefings, and another half an hour to form up the first wave strike force of 160 aircraft, the planes of the 1st and 2nd Battalions of 3rd Aviation, with 40 equipped as fighters and the remaining 120 fitted with two 400-kg bombs each to drag Murmansk over the fire with 96 tons total of bombs. Elements of 3rd Battalion, the ones that had been flying close air support, had been sent after the battle to recon Murmansk and had come back with reports and map sketches by the time the rest of them were finished planning the attack. Soon enough the aircraft were on their way, so the rest of Third Division (what was left of it, a single LT Brigade, two Motorized Brigades and a fraction of an Aviation Brigade) set up a defence perimeter and the men began their standard nap rotation system.

The returning pilots' report was glowing: They had set two tankers in harbour alight with armour-piercing bombs, blown up as many cranes as were present, bombed several ammunition warehouses, thoroughly messed up the train tracks and trains present, and lit off every fuel tank in the tank farm. The planes had come home after blasting the shit out of any AA guns they could find or which fired on them. They had also sunk every Soviet ship in the harbour but leaving the ships of other nations alone. The fighter craft had exterminated what few Soviet planes could get in the air as well as strafed the airfield to destroy any and all Soviet planes there. A bomb warehouse there had been one of those hit by the dive-bombing V-F-1938As as well, according to the aircrew responsible.

Of course, Hannah knew better than to accept the reports without a grain of salt, no matter how much she drilled into the pilots' heads to not exaggerate, so she sent off the second wave, the refuelled and re-supplied planes of the 3rd Battalion. A few of the craft had to patch up a few scars from earlier, but they were expected to do fine. Hannah estimated that 80% of the strategic Soviet military facilities had been hit by the first wave even though the pilots had claimed upward of 95%, simply because they had expended all bombs on targets, and that meant there were probably more targets. Therefore a second wave was needed to effectively knock Fourteenth Army completely out of the fight for at least a month or even two. The 80 planes flew off without incident shortly after their fellows taxied off the lake and while they were still being loaded onto the trucks that usually carried them and some of their supplies around (part of the reason why Aviation Brigades had overwhelmingly many trucks).

The interesting about the report on Murmansk was that the cranes in the harbour, those that existed, had appeared from the air to be inadequate for handling heavy armoured vehicles, they were bombed regardless. It was the only open-water port in the Arctic near the combat zone, as Archangel, to the east, would be unavailable from about mid-December on, so there was no way supplies could come by ship now (even with the massive damage to the Baltic Fleet it was still possible for freighters to loop around, in theory). The train station and several bridges in the area had also been torn to shreds by bombs, so the Soviets could at best subsist until they could get their logistics back online. The Shepard Industries forces had no such problems, carrying extra tons of fuel oil and ammunition in their vehicles as well as food, clothes and such they were not very dependent on logistics, though truck convoys still made supply runs once in a while.

Hannah's planes came back at 1523 from the second wave with only three aircraft lost to a surprise attack by a handful of enemy fighters and remaining AAA guns. The Soviet resistance had been exterminated and other planes had covered the two fighter-configuration planes that had landed to pick up the four surviving aviators from where they'd parachuted, converging using parachute steering to land in the same clear area just beyond the city's borders. She praised the brave rescuers and told them and the rescued fliers to relax and take a break while they moved toward their next target, headed south to engage the 112th Division in battle. Hannah was feeling fairly confident so far, since the Soviets seemed to be REALLY bad strategists, maybe because of Stalin's foolish purge? She had lost only 13 men of Third Division, eleven in battle with the Soviets on the Ratte Road as Third Mechanized fought a sort of delaying action against the Soviets. They were smashing Soviet supply lines repeatedly and bombarding the 44th and 163rd Rifle Divisions as the targets tried to hunt down the sources of the harassment attacks with no success. Third Mechanized was also regularly sending truck and APC convoys to Oulu for more ammunition and fuel supplies, but that was not a problem as over 100,000 tons of supplies were still readily available at Oulu, and more would be coming in good time.

The one problem Shepard Industries faced was that they needed to whack the Soviets hard enough to dissuade further attacks in northern Finland, at least during the months when the Baltic was frozen, which would come by late December. They needed to move the men back to the real front lines in the south before that could happen, to be put into decisive counterattacks on the USSR instead of the boring defensive battles they were fighting now. Besides, sooner or later the Soviets would just try to swamp them with men, and she didn't want her troops to need to face that situation before they could force a peace on the USSR.

* * *

><p><em>Part of Lapland, Finland, December 5, 1939<em>

The Finnish defenders had pulled back at the behest of the Shepard Industries military, which was marching into the village of Salla with 15000 personnel, sworn to defend it against the 35000 oncoming Soviets. SI had not yet designed a land mine, so they had to make do in the form of a large number of grenades with trip-wires in the snow of the road the Soviets were coming down (according to aerial recon). The tanks were stationed hull-down in entrenched positions, 100 in the crescent of anti-armour firepower while the remaining 428 tanks were held on the flanks to surge forward and exterminate the enemy later in conjunction with the APCs in their swarms. The lighter vehicles were meant to provide close AA support, eliminate lighter-armoured vehicles with impunity and provide anti-infantry fire for those who foolishly tried satchel charges. SI turret designs universally resisted those, and the engine covers were engineered to reduce the effectiveness of Molotov Cocktails to essentially nil. It hadn't been that complicated of a concept, so Hannah wasn't sure why no one else had thought of it, but it didn't matter.

Trucks and APC squads made up the longer-range pursuit squads, since they were more effective against fleeing infantry than LTs, thanks to carrying their own infantry inside. That was another big reason why SI infantry didn't touch the ground except in urban warfare: friendly fire against infantry was essentially IMPOSSIBLE! Of course, the troops still were careful about it, especially if destroyed friendly vehicles were around, but that was beside the point. The A-WTC-40-75A was still able to punch through any armour on current Soviet vehicles at long range thanks to its fast, reasonably hefty, aerodynamic and powerful shells, but the anti-tank guns the Soviets had would present an actual threat to the "mere" 60mm armour of the APCs and of course the few millimetres of armour on the trucks. In the case of the former engagements had to be dragged out to 1000 meters or more, even considering the sloped plating, for trucks, all one could do was not get hit. Still, it was not expected that the enemy would be able to use deployed anti-tank guns on the run except for ambush scenarios. With the constant air recon of the oncoming and seemingly very cocky soviet column, as well as the SI recon trucks discreetly following four kilometres behind the Soviets, that was highly unlikely.

The fact that by 1400 hours APCs were using their commander periscopes to report from cover the progress of the Soviets (the plumes of snow and occasional explosion when a trap got something good helped track their progress) and had been for several hours in the half-dusk did not help the Soviets one bit. The Red Army soldiers, believing that the primitive Finns could never hope to stop them despite the landmines, marched brazenly through the countryside like an army of ants, cresting another ridge and reaching the bottom of the next shallow valley in record time. Even the drone of aircraft engines behind them did not stop them beyond a quick glance back for most, seeing red spiky patterns under the wings and dismissing the planes as friendly. Of course, the staccato of machine-gun fire brought their attention, and they realized too late that they had been looking at red maple leaf patterns instead of red stars as the four aircraft swooped downward and strafed the Soviet column in line. Men exploded in showers of blood and pieces of flesh as 12.5mm bullets tore them apart en masse, while the survivors went for cover immediately. Gun crews deployed their guns quickly and with practice, preparing to take care of further aerial strafing runs.

It turned out however that the irregular snow on the reverse slope of the next ridge top that the Soviet commander, a Major General, had just taken note of seemed too regular to him. With a deep frown he ordered his anti-tank guns to fire on them with the best AP ammunition they had for close-range engagement, as the range was at best 300 meters. They didn't get a chance to fire as the one hundred dug-in T-1936Bs opened fire in a rippling sheet of flames and chattering machine-guns upon seeing the anti-tank guns start deploying.

"There has to be something to be said about the Soviets' political commissars…" Hannah muttered as she supervised the loading of the new Soviet prisoners and observed the lines handing out food tins to them. Then she looked toward the men responsible for pouring drinkable water into the prisoners' canteens from the stupidly large water tanks all SI vehicles carried (up to a thousand litres per truck and 500 or so for APCs and Tanks).

"That they're all dumb son of a bitches who at best distract us proper officers?" A man walking past her in the line grumbled in accented English. A look at his uniform revealed him to have been the Major General commanding the joint force of the 88th and 112th Divisions. He had wanted to deploy his troops in a more cautious, loose and fanned-out formation, more square than line, but his commissars had overrode his judgement. In the end he'd shot both the fools in the back of the head during the debacle and then dragged down the divisions' colours to raise the white flag himself amidst a soon rapidly decreasing hail of gunfire. He'd also wanted to start moving the heavy guns in half-deployed form (though that would be slower) or even leap-frog his anti-tank guns and artillery, but… the commissars had reminded him it would be unseemly for the Red Army to display such cowardice. The end result of their interference was that SI Third Division had lost a total of 3 APCs (2 disabled, 1 catastrophic kill), 2 Trucks and 1 tank for his two divisions. If he'd had his way… maybe they wouldn't have lost so badly…

"Well yes, Major General, you are correct, I feel almost sorry for your countrymen that they should have such fools attempting to bully them around." Hannah stated.

The man cracked a grin "On that, we are agreed…" he gestured around at the lines of prisoners being given food, water and in the cases that wanted it blankets "Your kind treatment of prisoners is… odd, but I am thankful to you for it."

"I want to be a good person and for my soldiers to be role models to soldiers everywhere." Hannah stated simply.

"I did not expect the Finns to have such a giant armoured column up north here, and I don't recall them having a red maple leaf with two vertical red bars as a logo. Who are you guys?"

"We're Shepard Industries, elements of Third Division, to be specific." One of the soldiers watching the prisoners answered as he noted the Soviet man hanging around in one place in the line for too long "General, should I make him move?" That meant shooing the man on his way, as beating POWs was strictly forbidden unless they threw the first punch (and there were witnesses that agreed that it was so), and even then only restraining them was needed. Of course, if they pulled a knife or something, you were allowed to shoot, but you still had to file a report and explain to a board of superior officers.

"Don't worry about it, well, Major General, I daresay you'll be in charge of the prisoners' side of things and speak for them as soon as you guys reach Helsinki." Hannah stated simply, everyone knew not to do anything stupid though, so that was left unsaid. "They look a bit lost now, maybe you could get them organized? You speak English, unlike most of them."

"I studied in England in my youth, and thanks again for giving my men food and water, General." The Soviet man stated with a curt nod as he walked away toward the prisoners milling around after being issued food and water, barking something in Russian.

* * *

><p>AN: Hey, I just realized that since this will eventually lead through the Psychic Dominator Disaster it wouldn't be too far-fetched to have magic exist too. Review with your opinion on this later.

I mean, Hermione Jane Granger had redhead genes up there somewhere as Rose Weasley is a redhead, since red hair is a very recessive trait. Jane Shepard is a redhead, so it wouldn't be too farfetched to, after about sixty years of running around, inventing things, blowing stuff up, etc. for her to get tired of it and try to settle down with a friend. She'd of course be using her family's genetic regeneration tendencies (think Zerg regeneration) to still be able to land someone good. Obviously, Hermione won't know what her mom does, just that her dad took up dentistry (maybe a former doctor on an SI ship) later on. I can wipe out magic with Tiberium later, say it attracts Tiberium or something…

Then again I would have a hard time cramping in the War of the Four Powers (SI refused to use the cheap gear of the Allies and had obtained enough land by then that they counted as a world power) into the timeline if I made that (HP cross) happen. I mean, think about it: WWII 1939-1948, Korea 1950-1953, WWIII (RA1) 1956-1960, Vietnam 1964-1967, WWIV (RA2) 1980-1983, Psychic Dominator Disaster 1984-1985, WWV (RA3 Sort Of) 1993-1995, War On Terror (Generals and Zero Hour sort of) 2001-2005, First Tiberium War (Tiberian Dawn) 2009-2012, Second Tiberium War 2029-2030, Firestorm Crisis 2031-2032, Second Nod Reunification War 2034-2035, Third Tiberium War 2047-2049, Marked Of Kane Incidents 2052-2053, Nod Civil War 2062-2073, Fourth Tiberium War 2076-2077. Mankind has a LOT of wars doesn't it? The longest peace was between TW 1 and 2… 17 years, only 17 years. WOW… The abundance of wars is why by the time of WWV the world's first and only PMC had grown large enough to make it "The War of Four Powers" instead of three.

I can see the ME races' reactions to this sort of history: *jaw drop*. Oh, and by the way, THAT is the main reason why this cannot possibly be the history of the Coalition in their distant past and needs to be a whole other universe/timeline. It contains a whole new explanation for a LOT of stuff, so it has to be a different universe/timeline.

A 400-word A/N, wow… REVIEW!


	11. The First Adequate Opponents

A/N: It's good to see that one controversial idea netted so many reviews, no magic then, but if Jane ever decides to settle down know that her daughter is still going to be named Hermione.

By the way, about the wars, they are spaced a reasonable distance apart, at least for the belligerents involved. And also regarding age limits, the longer a line is purebred, the longer its members tend to last. Think about it, there is a reason Kane will not be as miffed as he could be by Hannah's existence ("We may be on opposing fronts, but that which dictates our natures makes us siblings.") uh oh…

Einstein is alive, though he was born later and thus nuclear tech will not be around in time for WWII. Yuri is yet to be born or in his infancy right about now, Moebius will work for Future-Tech, I believe, and The Tiberium Wars will be a V (GDI and SI cooperating against Nod forces) until the Third one. Also, the Scrin will be as powerful as they ought to have been, especially their air force, though the best of GDI and Nod fliers will be able to stack up the Scrin will have numerical superiority and the ability for Devastators to target air (despite being appallingly inaccurate it can still mow down fighters like no tomorrow). As for the Future-Tech SI competition, it will be a tough, no-holds-barred contest between cheap, reliable and easily mass-produced gear versus even more reliable, powerful, slower-production and less interruptible gear. Examples will not be written down until the time comes, and even then I'll have to wait until I'm certain about the division of units. However, I can promise SI will have Prism and Particle Cannon tech while FT has Spectrum and Proton Collider tech. Both will have access to Mirage technology and later limited stealth technology (GDI later accused SI of leaking tech to Nod… little did they know it was FT, their own protégé, which did it).

I know curb-stomping is boring, so casualty counts will rise, though they will stay vastly lower than those of average militaries for good reasons. Here, I amped up the casualty counts by about 9 times from the first draft, but the end ratio is still virtually Pearl Harbour in magnitude. Note that the information I cite is true, and that the only reason I'm stuck now with OP SI is that I didn't quite consider well enough how the world stacked up, since I only knew the Panzer 4 started in 1939 with a 75mm gun, and the T-34 had a 76.2mm in 1940. I had no clue that they would use such short barrels and that armour penetration was so low back then, as I was expecting better than 1x gun calibre penetration of RHA even at 1500 meters, it turned out that only the Flak-88 can do that.

* * *

><p>Chapter 11: The First <em>Adequate<em> Opponents

_Finland, December 17, 1939_

The Ratte Road campaign was over by December 11th with the annihilation of the 44th and 163rd Rifle Divisions by SI Third Division forces, with only 29 men lost by SI for 15,000 Soviet casualties and 6000 prisoners. A total of 43 men had been lost by Third Division before they returned to Oulu on the 13th and shipped back south to Helsinki via the same freighters that had come with the convoy sent from Canada near the beginning of the month. They were already behind the Mannerheim Line, ready to mount a huge counter-attack, by December 15th.

There was however a worrying new development, even though long-distance bombing runs kept the Soviets from launching another attack in the north, reports had filtered in of new Soviet tank designs being fielded. One was called the T-40 mounting an FT-34 gun, which could cut through APC plating at ranges less than about one kilometre with a good flank shot. It was also resistant to 40mm shells at that sort of range, according to APC engagement reports, but its armour was still easily penetrable by A-WTC-75-60A armour-piercing shells and its gun still couldn't punch through the plating of a T-1936B at even point-blank ranges (testing with a spare armour plate had proven it with a captured gun). At least, the ammunition currently available couldn't, as 30 degrees from horizontal made the 80mm armour equal to 160mm, and the RHA SI used was high-quality and probably among the more expensive pats of its vehicles, though economy of scale made it more affordable.

Hannah had basically strangled more money out of the Finnish government for her combat losses as she started sustaining losses and the Finnish defence strategy made any direct counterattack on the Mannerheim Line too costly to immediately contemplate. The Red Army's forces were swelling dangerously and only the front north of Lake Ladoga was really successful in smashing the Soviets repeatedly thanks to having room to manoeuvre and slice up the Soviet forces into smaller and smaller encirclements before pounding them into surrender or dust, whichever they chose in the end.

The Soviets seemed to be at best entirely strategically incompetent at the deployment of their newer, better tanks though, at least that was a relief… Hannah really needed to hurry up the development of her new hardware or she might fall behind. Her tanks were more mobile, better armoured, better armed and better trained than their Soviet counterparts, and more importantly had better doctrine. However, she could rapidly lose that edge if she didn't keep up. Jane was working hard on new tank designs back home if the letter was right, and also supervising numerous other projects. Hannah expected to be able to begin development of the new tank and its gun by spring 1940 and finish by the next summer or so, she needed to ensure her men were always equipped with the best. They were the best regular soldiers in existence and deserved only the best gear. However it was difficult balancing cost, ease of maintenance, reliability, firepower, protection and mobility into good packages for everything, and Hannah feared she would start to lose customers out of sheer cost if nothing else. However, this new war provided some VERY good business opportunities, as well as chances to gain good influence. She'd suggested to King an audacious plan on levying 100% taxation on all corporate profits above 125% of the pre-war numbers except agriculture, which could be allowed to hit 130%, and the Cabinet had agreed to get the Wartime Profit Tax through if the war began to take too much resources. They'd confided in her that it wasn't fear of her company costing the country too much as she knew how to make really good stuff cheaply and efficiently (the former arose from the latter saving on workers' wages) but they believed Britain might buy a LOT on-credit from Canada. She could get good influence off that simply because she wouldn't be using the extra money as profit. She would spend it acquiring land all over the world and exerting influence on other governments, such as pushing Portugal into giving her full usage rights over some of the islands in the Azores and buying land on the easternmost coasts of Newfoundland. But that was another plan for later.

Currently the largest issue was that the casualty count was beginning to grow intolerable (PMCs had to maintain a good survival rate to attract recruits) and the Baltic was slowly freezing over. Soon she would need to send all the ships away and only have her ground and air forces for support. Of course that also meant the Soviets couldn't use sea transport either but… it meant that paths over the ice of the Baltic opened up new routes for flanking manoeuvres and assaults. This was especially true for the Soviets, with their lighter armoured vehicles that could make safe passages over thinner ice than SI vehicles could. But that didn't matter in tank-versus-tank battles—she should really consider fielding tank destroyers, Hannah thought—where tactics, firepower, protection, mobility and superior logistics always won out. Soviet train wrecks littered the tracks to Leningrad for dozens kilometres now, and they seemed to have begun resorting to loading military supplies in passenger coaches, which were as per doctrine not bombed, though soldiers seen offloading crates were fair game for strafing runs. The strategic bombing efforts had slowed down Soviet resupply significantly, so they weren't bringing more than a handful of T-40 tanks to the front at any one time fitted with the F-34 gun (42.5 calibres barrel length). That was good, the fact that PR with most of the world was still going well was also good, depicting the Soviets as carelessly throwing their bombs, especially the incendiary bombs, all over Finnish cities while SI pilots made high-risk diving attacks on Soviet targets to be as precise as possible. However, Hannah could not afford the attrition rate her pilots were beginning to suffer as the Soviets gave up on concentrating AAA and instead put a few pieces in each spot they needed to defend. Over the last few days her daily 80-plane strikes would always come home two, three or even four short. That was unacceptable.

So the logical way of doing this was to give the enemy a good left hook while Von Esling, now only in command of the Ladoga Karelia front, sliced and diced the Red Army attack columns over and over. The Soviets were still stupidly using frontal charges on the Mannerheim Line, so there was no real worry there even with the newer, better Soviet tanks. After all, her APCs still had a third again the frontal armour thickness of T-40s, if the captured ones were anything to go by.

* * *

><p><em>Mannerheim <em>_Line, __December __23, __1939_

The supply situation was still excellent despite shipping having been cut off, with millions of tons of fuel, ammunition, food and equipment scattered in many warehouse locations in southern Finland. The problem though was to not let the Soviets build up their forces too much south of the Mannerheim Line. Hannah had chosen to observe the Soviet behaviours for a few days, and it paid off in that the Soviets stopped their suicidal charges and their reconnaissance was lessened, especially with the Finn known as the White Death taking care of their scouts whenever they were around. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" was a quote that worked well here, the former for the Battle of Taipale, and the latter for the rather demoralized Red Army.

The strategic offensive began two days before Christmas as Soviet troops woke up at 2 AM to the growling of thousands of gasoline engines. This was mere moments before 700-plus (multiple "tank crates" had been brought from home and put together while in Finland by the mechanics and welders among the troops) T-1936Bs of Third Division (First and Second were to be deployed slightly later) began to roll over the Soviet positions like a thundering herd of steel beasts. APC-1935Bs (with improved targeting systems and skirt armour) followed close behind, the trucks coming somewhat later with their own APC escorts.

A number of tanks were lost to heavy artillery guns but the rest buried the gun positions under a lake of ammunition, including shells fired from immobilized tanks (some of the smaller AP shells couldn't tear through the engine compartment to reach the crew and ammunition). Soviet infantry were shot or run over, unless they surrendered, but those were few and far in between. The POWs were secured by the Finns that followed the marauding armoured force around as support. Needless to say, the Finns were rather intrigued by the near-immunity of SI armoured vehicles to Molotov cocktails (one successful disabling out of twenty-three attempts) and were rather overjoyed that they had hired a company with so much punch. They didn't like how their units and SI's were always separate in quarters and such, but Hannah was a bit paranoid about possible betrayals, after all, you never know…

The left hook to the Soviet line was to be such that they would be thrown all the way back to the old border before Third Division began to loop west. At the same time, First Division would launch an attack along the coast of the Gulf of Finland to encircle the Seventh Army in a crushing pincer movement. Estimated Soviet strength along the entire area to be entrapped was eleven divisions worth, and once the encirclement was complete, the main task of the SI troops would be to hold the perimeter and provide artillery support while the Finns destroyed the Soviets systematically. For the artillery and armoured support given to the defences over the past days, Finland had paid two million additional pounds sterling as a gesture of gratitude. The Finnish people had pressured their government into doing this, as one newspaper editorial had put things before the gesture (translated to English) "Shepard Industries is far more effective than any other force we could hire, purchase or field for a similar price, therefore we must show them how grateful we are for their accepting our initially frugal contract."

The Finns had gladly taken up the defensive along the Ladoga Karelia front to allow Second Division to participate in this massed offensive near the center of the line. Said Division was offset to the east so that it would meet up with Third Division quickly and be in position to smash south-southwest through Soviet units to finally meet with First Division. This time, Gunter was in charge of First Division while Hannah handled Third and Second Divisions. The timing was excellent, with the first attack near Taipale beginning at 0200 with no preparatory barrage, though bombers did perform in-depth precision strikes against Soviet artillery the moment those far below them began to engage. The Soviets were caught completely off-guard for an assault of this magnitude, and their limited defensive line was torn to shreds and left in the dust. Having adjusted her men's sleep cycles for over a week, Hannah's troops were wide awake when the Soviets were still sleepy. Combined with superior gear (semiautomatic rifles, better trucks, better tanks, etc.), training, and doctrine, it produced a total breakthrough as the armoured column stabbed toward the old border. One hour of battling on the move later, they had reached the border, moving at a fraction of their maximum stable off-road speed, only having lost 27 vehicles and 80-some men in their rolling thunder of an attack. Then they wheeled west to cut through the rear of the Soviet lines but not into Soviet territory. By this time, the Soviets had gotten their own Tank Corps into motion and were headed east to engage the enemy with a couple hundred T-40s and many lighter vehicles as well as towed anti-tank guns. For lack of better terms, said Tank Corps did not make it.

Second Division's main thrust was timed to be whenever the hideously visible Soviet armoured columns began to head east to try to cut off Third Division. The bulk of the 700-some tanks of Second Division essentially rammed the Soviet armoured column from the side, relying on superior long-ranged firepower and their own immunity at long range to Soviet shells to hammer them into submission. With 700 tank-mounted guns firing in staggered volleys all along the line of engagement (on the Soviets' left flank) and bombers diving down to blast any heavy gun the Soviets tried to set up, the engagement was quickly turned into a full-fledged rout. The Soviets should have turned their tanks to face the enemy, to present their thicker forward armour which might have survived at least a shot or two, but with their ineffective doctrine… The T-40's side armour, 45mm plating at a maximum inclination from vertical of 45 degrees was still combat-ineffective at ranges under about two kilometres against the kinetic energy kill slugs of the A-WTC-75-60A gun. The 60 degrees from vertical inclination of the glacis plate would have done better. However, the Red Army was hampered by Stalin's purges of the competent officers and never had good armoured warfare doctrine to begin with. That was why they were being beaten up so badly, however, the Soviets eventually decided on charging the SI positions, despite the SI tanks traversing their turrets and hulls for efficient flank shots on the Soviets. At close range, the F-34 gun was still effective, scoring twelve disabled tanks and five catastrophic kills before the Soviets were erased from existence at the total cost of five tanks and 25 crewmen dead or wounded (two of whom were wounded by shrapnel from the half-pierced bulkheads in their tanks). The problem with the T-1936B was that unlike the A it required 4 crew members, one as a loader (the turret was loader, gunner and commander however the large squat profile and S-WM-15A mount gave the men plenty of space), and so each lost tank represented more men.

Hannah gritted her teeth as she heard the report while Second Division was hunting down Soviet stragglers and moving toward the border, where her own forces were also moving to. Thanks to good coordination between her and the Brigadier currently in charge of second Division, they met up at 0421 without any friendly fire incidents. The next stage was the journey south-southwest to the shoreline of the Gulf of Finland, where they would rendezvous with First Division after the Finnish Army following the two spearheading Divisions caught up and had the whole line ready to repel breakout attempts by the Soviets. It was after the rendezvous, at 0430, that Hannah sent the go-ahead to Gunter von Esling "Gunter, you have permission to go to Stage Two, repeat, you have permission to go to Stage Two." She stated simply, followed by the confirmation code they'd privately agreed on for this operation (it was too risky otherwise).

First Division surged out of its temporary and fake entrenchments on the right flank of the Finnish line, the left flank of the Soviets at 0431, the bombers having begun their dives as soon as the go-ahead was given. The Soviets had their attentions and most of their armour moving east piecemeal (other than the Tank Corps, they were moving in small groups) and so First Division hacked its way through with minimal losses. However, by the time the rendezvous occurred at 0656 (they were slower than normal due to the need to drop off supplies and materials for the Finnish Army that was tagging along setting up machine-gun positions and bunkers) Shepard Industries Finland Campaign Deaths had already grown to over 300 soldiers grand total, which was not good. Hannah was determined to keep the death rate on any campaign under one percent, and she was already halfway to that mark out of the 60,000 ground soldiers (and about 8,000 naval crewmen). This was unacceptable, completely unacceptable. In retaliation for inflicting casualties she could not afford, she checked her artillery ammunition stockpiles… deemed them satisfactory and opened fire on the entrapped Soviets.

Of course, she'd sent an envoy, a Finnish envoy, to negotiate surrender terms first, but then the Soviets had beheaded the man and put his head on a pike (she was glad she hadn't sent her own men, or the angry troops would have with her assent ground the Soviets into mincemeat in about a second). After that, recon-detected Soviet artillery was fair game for her artillery and so was bombing the crap out of the Soviets.

* * *

><p><em>USSR-Finland Border, December 25, 1939<em>

The three divisions she had were starting to suffer from attrition of gear thanks to constantly fighting off Soviet relief attempts along the border while the Finnish constructed more advanced fortifications. Her aircraft were taking turns in the air bombing the Soviets on both sides of the new line, strafing their infantry, strategic-bombing all nearby trains, bridges and tunnel entrances they could find, and basically wreaking havoc. However, in the past three days of fighting she'd had to scrap or lost several planes, one for flying home with over 30 visible bullet holes in the wings and fuselage and a half-shredded semi-functional engine, plus one side's wing landing wheel totally shot away. She'd also had to repair three tank tracks and replace six wheels from Mobility Kills, replace several engines, and do patch repairs on the armour of the tanks and APCs against the constant Soviet armoured thrusts. The Finns promised to have their new defences ready to fully assist in four days, well, at least that was one good thing, they looked about ready by now…

In the meantime, her pamphlet campaign starting today had already started yielding an effect. Two Soviet battalions and a whole Infantry Regiment had already surrendered within five hours of the pamphlet campaign, but the others seemed to be holding out. No matter, the pamphlets (obviously in Russian) only guaranteed ceasefire until midnight today, and after Christmas Day was over, no holds were barred. Of course, that explained the huge number of artillery pieces she had ready to bombard the Soviets at a moment's notice. She'd even assembled a bunch from their folded-up and disassembled "crate" forms (guns weren't welded, they were typically bolted together so they could be disassembled and/or salvaged easily) and put them into position.

* * *

><p><em>North Atlantic, January 3, 1940<em>

It had been nearly a month since the pocket-battleship _Admiral __Graf __Spee_ had escaped Montevideo by way of blasting out past the battered cruisers of Harwood's Force G. Despite the ship being damaged by the British guns, armour and engine upgrades since the Lithuanian Standoff as it was called by world media prevented the ship from being disabled and three days of frantic patch repair in Montevideo had resolved the damage anyhow. It had sunk first the _Exeter_ then disabled the guns of the _Ajax_ and _Achilles_, the two light cruisers accompanying the _Exeter_, before departing for Montevideo to leave the British ships to rescue their friends in the water. After effecting repairs, Captain Langsdorff chose to not believe the intelligence reports of far superior forces waiting to destroy his ship and steamrollered over the _Cumberland_, a British Heavy Cruiser rushed up from the Falklands, upon leaving the harbour. It left the two disabled British ships to save their friends as it vanished over the horizon, heading east, then north and following the hump of Africa.

After resupplying from a supply ship, it had taken a tour in the Caribbean and posed a severe embarrassment for Britain via sinking five ships before heading out into the North Atlantic again, following information of several little-defended Allied convoys. Much to its misfortune, Shepard Industries, currently not having too much of a market for their own heavy bulk freighters, was running escorts for other shipping companies, those that could afford their services. It was also during the sea trials of the eighth Destroyer of Shepard Industries, along with the rest of its escort squadron, and they were being hired out for this job. It would be the third convoy the Admiral Graf Spee sailed toward.

Each escort squadron had six N-EC-1937B Corvettes, three N-EF-1937B Frigates, an N-ED-1938A Destroyer and an N-CE-1938A Escort Carrier, able to field 48 aircraft from its hangar decks but substantially less armoured than its cousins, the Light and Medium Carriers. As soon as one of the screening Corvettes of the convoy spotted smoke on the horizon it deployed its two fast-attack boats to investigate, which then turned away as soon as it identified the target. The convoy coordinator was told to simply keep moving while the aircraft of the EC were being scrambled to be loaded with torpedoes and 400kg bombs. Usually, only two were in the air at a time, each carrying a 200kg depth charge (less load, more patrol time), which held 160kg high explosive and was fused to detonate at five meters depth (able to damage or destroy anything from a surfaced sub to periscope depth). In the meantime the main gun-bearing ships of the escort, the three Frigates and the Destroyer, formed up and prepared to engage the German pocket-battleship with a gunnery duel if need be. Knowing full well that the Destroyer alone could handily outfight their opponent, the squadron commander put it at the head of the line.

The _Graf __Spee_ started turning away when it spotted aircraft on the horizon with its radar systems, but even as it dodged the torpedoes and bombs lobbed at it to the best of its ability it detected a force separating from the convoy and following it in a chase at high speed. Shell splashes rose up into the sky alongside the German ship as the enemy closed to 37 kilometres range minutes after the bomb splashes and near-misses had damaged the ship just slightly. From the size of the splashes, Langsdorff surmised that the opponents were beyond the ability of his ship to engage handily. Unfortunately the enemy ships seemed to have a full fifteen knots on him as he steamed away at 29.5 knots, his max speed. During sea acceptance trials SI ships were not loaded down by as much cargo and extra supplies (usually mostly fuel) as they could carry and "merely" ran with full tanks and standard stores. Without ballast water, a Destroyer's five diesel drives, giving 150,000 shaft horsepower, could propel it at a maximum of 47 knots though only for long, straight stretches (to let it build up speed), and safe manoeuvring speed (for the tightest circles the ships could manage) was limited to 33 knots. When fully ballasted or loaded with cargo, 12000 tons thereof, the speeds (manoeuvring and max) matched at about 35-36 knots.

And so it was that the _Admiral __Graf __Spee_ entered its final chase. The N-ED-1938A Destroyer alone could fire shells with an effective range outranging the _Graf __Spee_ by some 7 to 9 kilometres (the 283mm guns of the Graf Spee could fire shells up to 30 kilometres with reasonable effect). Using light AP shells which would increase velocity on impact for the shell, which wasn't much heavier than those of the _Graf __Spee_, it was no contest really. That was not considering that while the Destroyer was shorter than its adversary it was nearly half again as wide, much heavier armoured, displacing more than half again as much, mounted heavier torpedoes, and had three times as much drive-train power in four shafts instead of two, with three rudders between the shafts. Sure, the secondary armament wasn't as good, but the result was effectively a foregone conclusion anyhow. The radio repeatedly blared an offer of surrender from the pursuers even while the German ship fired back at its pursuers to the best of its ability.

The range was closing by the minute as the fire from both sides grew more accurate. A 300kg shell from the 283mm gun of the _Graf __Spee_ impacted on and glanced off the well-slanted and wedge-shaped (from above, the turret looked sort of like this: [ with three guns) 350mm armour of the forward turret of the Destroyer. It left a gouge-like scar while the Destroyer's own 300mm cannons were reloading. The others of its salvo went a bit short and smashed holes in the front thinly armoured portion of the Destroyer, which had something close to an "All-Or-Nothing" armour scheme with only 60mm of forward deck and hull plating, plus 30mm bulkheads. The Frigates fanned out around it, one to port and two to starboard, firing with their 200mm guns, with their forward turret only. The nine shells resulted in seven shell splashes near the German ship and a pair of explosions as a secondary 150mm dual-gun turret, hit with two shells at once, flew off its mount into the sea. Before long the German ship had turned to present its broadside (it was thanks to a jammed rudder that was later counteracted by the other rudder turning out the other way) and the SI ships kept barrelling toward it, firing again and again, a pair of 300mm shells completely disabled the 180mm-armoured rear main turret of the German vessel before it stopped firing. The SI ships also stopped, and for a moment there was only silence and the shout of lookouts reporting the Germans taking down their flags, before the radio crackled and Langsdorff responded to the request for surrender "We can no longer fight, please hold fire, we surrender. If you can, please pick up my crew."

Needless to say, since they knew Langsdorff hated unnecessary death, from reports on the Battle of the River Plate and his earlier exploits (his commerce raiding was death-less), the SI crew assembled all the Germans on the deck. They knew Langsdorff would never scuttle his ship while his men were onboard, so they secured everyone (including Langsdorff) and THEN unloaded them onto the Destroyer to be put in the relatively comfortable brig. They would stay there until they could get back to Halifax, which was expected to be in four or five more days by the snail's pace of this convoy. A prize crew was put on the _Admiral __Graf __Spee_ and she was brought under tow to follow along the convoy after the lowered German flag, but not the ship's battle standard, was torn off and the Maple Leaf with Bars of Shepard Industries was put up alongside the ship's proudly raised battle standard. The Destroyer was patched up after turning toward the convoy, so that it could move at high speed, the little cranes of the skirt armour system were good for more than just replacing or putting out the plates, so they were used to hold the thin metal plates in place while bilge pumps worked to get rid of the water and bolts were put in to secure the repairs. The battle had been short and one-sided, but it was the first opponent that the SI Destroyer had faced that could even be classified as adequate, since no currently known ship (not counting carriers) could both outrun and outfight such a Destroyer. The N-ED-1938A and the _Deutschland_-class heavy cruisers were designed on the same principles, in that no ship should be able to catch them and outgun them, while being equipped with enough armour to resist shells of ships that could catch up. The problem was that the German ships had been designed more than a decade before the Canadian design, hence technology had changed, oh it had changed…

* * *

><p><em>Mannerheim <em>_Line, __February __11, __1940_

New Year's Day was a case of "All Quiet on the Western Front", beyond the last Soviet holdout being ground to bloodied and muddied snow under the tracks of Hannah's armoured units. Things after New Year's started going bad though. The new Soviet General, Timoshenko, was concentrating massive forces despite her best work to stop him, and she didn't quite want to invade the USSR yet, it was too risky… but it had to be done.

The invasion was scheduled for February 1, 1940, to give the Finnish time to reorganize, but on January 31, all bets were off as the forward Finnish positions came under a gigantic artillery barrage. There had been a long-term bombardment going on during January as the Finns prepared for the coming battle, but the bombers had suppressed them as best as they could. That was considering the increasing number of fighter load-out aircraft that had to be thrown into the skies to hunt down swarms of Soviet fighters that had been pitted against them. Consistently having the upper hand in quality and often quantity, the V-F-1938As blew away their opposition yet still suffered attrition rates that Hannah did not approve of, despite most aircrews surviving being shot down and being put into newly-assembled aircraft put together in the field.

They had waited too long as 300,000 shells rained down on the Finnish line in the first 24 hours and the bombardment continued for days on end. It was keeping the SI ground troops back behind the Mannerheim line for safety after several hundred casualties, mostly light shrapnel wounds thanks to armoured vehicles and truck hulls. By the eleventh of February, the forward Finnish positions had all the consistency of Swiss cheese and over 400,000 Soviet troops, with 3400 artillery pieces, 3000 tanks (about a thousand of which were T-40s) and 1300 aircraft poured over the border again.

Hannah's Private Military Company could only field 960 aircraft to duel it out in the skies and bomb hostile artillery over and over, with far inferior numbers of artillery guns. However the three Divisions did have roughly equivalent numbers of tanks to the Soviets, if the APCs were counted as half-tanks, despite far inferior numbers of soldiers. Hannah and her men and women knew what really mattered: Training, Tactics, and Technology. They would achieve victory here or fall down into the ash-heap of history. They couldn't afford losing…

The problem as the Soviets surged northward (taking five whole days) to the Mannerheim Line was where to strike, but then the solution was found. Hannah was long gone from the Line by the time the Soviets ran up against the Line again, having gone northeast to the inactive front north of Lake Ladoga with all her forces and a large amount of supplies, especially oil and ammunition. She was nowhere to be found when Soviet air recon headed there to search for her forces, which were in winter camouflage, similar to what the Soviets had FINALLY done in late January. No one figured out where she was until a day later when the headquarters of the Thirteenth Army woke up in the night as prisoners. Hannah had looped around Lake Ladoga far faster than the Soviets had expected (she was long gone by the time their air patrols reached the area, dragging tree branches behind the vehicles at the rear to mask their tracks in the snow) to launch her attack with 2000-some tanks and 3700-plus APCs straight into the rear of the Soviet forces. They were smashing supply depots and looting petrol as they moved north, silencing radio antennae by sniper fire before they could do anything, and generally wreaking absolute havoc as they rolled northward into the rear of the advancing Red Army units, smashing their tanks (detected by barrel flashes) and mowing down men in drive-by style as the attack arced west, losing some of their own vehicles once in a while.

Even Timoshenko could do nothing (A/N: Historically, he really couldn't do much during Barbarossa, for similar reasons of confusion) as reports of forces estimated between 1000 to 100,000 men came from nearly all his troops at once. The estimates were usually based on numbers of tanks and vehicles, and needless to say tended therefore to be hugely exaggerated, as this time SI troops did NOT have accompanying Finns in their huge motorized columns. It was literally a mess inside the Soviet General's HQ as he tried to figure out what the hell was wrong with the entire Finland Front and why the hell Thirteenth Army seemed to have been wiped off the map while everyone else was being hit at once.

In actual fact, most of the units were merely being harassed by five to ten tanks with twice as many APCs stirring them into panic and distracting them from the boiling lake of armoured fury that was rolling down from the east, as well as the Finns, who were mounting another full-scale counterattack into the Soviet units. Artillery was also raining down on the harassed and pressured Soviets, so as to heighten the image of impending doom, but the Soviets didn't know one thing: Hannah Shepard never, EVER used preparatory bombardment, or at least not bombardment that was more than a few minutes before the attack, strategic bombing excluded.

It took only two days for four hundred thousand plus Soviet troops to suffer, at the hands of 150,000 Finns and 59,000 Shepard Industries troops, over a hundred and ten thousand dead, with twenty-some thousand surrendered and another hundred thousand either missing or surrounded in isolated pockets. Timoshenko had only managed to withdraw something like a hundred and fifty thousand of his men in "orderly" fashion. That meant moving them in such a large mass that they couldn't be attacked effectively by the marauding armoured forces of his enemies, and they'd leapfrogged their way in artillery back so as to dissuade pursuing SI Tanks. In glorified terms, it was the artillery and armour holding the front, barely, while the infantry was busy routing along the coast of the Gulf of Finland toward Leningrad.

According to later stories, Stalin was often seeing eating maple syrup with his pancakes in that whole winter of 1939-1940, as well as later during the Third World War. According to lore, he was quoted to have been saying "If I hate that maple leaf logo so much, then why not at least have some comfort food related to it?" before taking another vicious bite out of his maple syrup doused pancake. Of course, the dictator would never have let anything so lame be published about him in his lifetime, but later, well…

Hannah Shepard was extremely angry by the end of the pursuit to the Finnish border. She had lost no less than thirty-five T-1936Bs in tank-to-tank engagements against T-40s because of the suicidal death charge tactics of the Soviet tankers when cornered. If they'd surrendered, it would have been so much easier, but they risked her casualty rate limit that she set for herself… Of course, those T-1936Bs had taken down from three to eight times their numbers in enemy tanks depending on engagement range but it still wasn't a ratio she could survive and thrive as a business person (as opposed to a country's military) with.

That was why she decided to take a long-cut to Leningrad (hooking east and around the routing Soviets) to cut off the retreating Soviets before they could all get to the city, then batter then into submission. Unfortunately the plan failed when she ran up against a solid Soviet defence line Timoshenko had ordered his reserves to frantically dig out as soon as he figured out what had happened to his main forces. The attack was repulsed with two dozen tanks lost from concentrated Soviet artillery, despite SI guns and bombers pounding out as much counter-battery fire as possible, but the point had been made and the Soviets were in full defence now.

Stalin decided to end the debacle then by finally accepting Finnish attempts to reopen negotiations (Hannah was still well content with the new contract for the second fifty-day period, so she didn't mind that the fighting was ending so early). The ceasefire commenced on Monday, February 12, 1940 at midnight, so it was then that Hannah began to pull her forces back and urged the Finnish commanders to do the same, for yet another elastic defence if need be…

The negotiations went on until Sunday, February 18th, when the Soviets finally accepted the terms the Finns offered, a total return to pre-war borders all along the front, instead of the current state which involved Finland intruding on nearly all fronts, especially the Karelian Isthmus near Leningrad. At the end, the USSR agreed to pay a small amount of war reparations, hoping to get into the League of Nations' good graces again but failing (despite paying Finland some 12 million pounds sterling). The final treaty was signed on February 19, and took effect on February 21.

The 58753 remaining land soldiers (532 dead, 715 wounded total casualties had already been shipped off) of Shepard Industries First, Second and third Divisions embarked on their journey home as soon as the Baltic began thawing and icebreakers were used to crack through the remaining ice. The 15-freighter, 15-troopship convoy (the troop-ship design had ceased production as the freighters functioned better for the general purposes of shipping, but there were still quite a few around) that arrived in Helsinki on the 21st of February took only a day to load up the troops. Casting off to a cheering, waving crowd of effectively the whole city of Helsinki in the early hours of the 22nd, the convoy, with its escorts, only took eight days to cross back to Canada at economy speed. They only sunk one out of five sighted German subs, and seven dented or holed (small holes) hull compartments had needed repair beyond the patches applied in the field, in addition to the seven corresponding wrecked plates of skirt armour, the remains of which would be recycled to make three or four new plates at the mills built just outside Halifax for material conservation. Where there was inadequate industrial might, Canada would make up for it in efficiency. Hell, her Medium Carriers had cost a third as much as their US counterparts thanks to supplying her own materials, and displaced twice as much, in addition to carrying similar numbers of superior aircraft. They would be critical in the battles to come, Hannah was sure of it.

She wanted her men and women to be in Spain before May, when the Germans were most likely to hit France with the spring thaw over and the ground adequately drained, but they deserved a good break. Watching them disembarking at Halifax Harbour on the First of March, Hannah smiled proudly but grimly. She was thinking of the battles sure to come in the near future and wondering how many more times she would need to give death or debilitation benefits to the families of the troops or the troops themselves… "Every one of these souls is finite and precious… and I am obliged to do whatever I can to save them all." She murmured, though unfortunately she was close to a newspaper reporter and it was quoted in the papers across Canada by the next day, with articles about the victorious return of the soldiers with a large profit reaped by Canada from the contracts with Finland and new trade opportunities and agreements. She didn't care that much about being quoted, but admitted that it was a pretty good quote. However, that brought her back to her largest problem:

_How __many? __How __many __of __my __men __and __women __will __die __before __Hitler, __Hirohito, __Mussolini, __Stalin __and __their __ilk __are __reduced __to __ashes?_ She thought bitterly, having read the report on the new Soviet-German treaties and agreements established in February. They may have saved Finland for now and Lithuania temporarily, but what other countries would fall before the dictators would? She had already failed Czechoslovakia and Poland.

The former was because Czechoslovakia was a land-locked country, and even though her naval forces could probably have battered their way (by use of aerial torpedoes and carriers) through say the Italians or Germans to get there, it wasn't even an option to go by sea. All the other countries in the vicinity were German-friendly or anti-Czech at the time. To the north was Poland, who wanted (and annexed) a piece of Czechoslovakia, the west was Germany, obviously a no-go in terms of transport, and the south end was Hungary, a pro-German country that she couldn't secure passage through at an affordable rate. To the east of the Czechs was the USSR, which was not then on friendly terms with her. It didn't like how she interfered in Lithuania, and she suspected it was because Germany taking the Memel Territory would give the Soviets an excuse to occupy the rest of the country to "protect" it without losing too much respect in the League of Nations.

Besides, even though the Czechs had a good industrial base and some good scientists (most of whom she'd discreetly brought over by smuggling through Poland, using her contacts throughout Europe) their language was different and any volunteers—and she was sure there would be MANY—would need to learn English before fully integrating into her forces. Sure, she liked multiculturalism, but not if it reduced efficiency of operations. In this case, the multiculturalism affecting her moral compass part was not clocked in to considerations as it did not apply.

By the time Hannah had learnt of events in Europe, Czechoslovakia had already lost the Sudetenland, the most defensible terrain in the country, where all its fortifications were, so it was basically doomed. It wasn't like she could get her troops there, at least not in time, and she couldn't combat-test her rapid-deployment field fortifications there since it was meant to be an ace in the hole at least for now. If the Czechs fell, too much of the technology could fall into German hands, and she couldn't afford that. So she could do nothing as the Germans pushed the British and French into negotiations and signed the Munich Agreement. Chamberlain had specifically blockaded King from doing anything about the aggressor by refusing his entry into the negotiation room at Munich. Well, it was more that he refused to let King participate and King, fuming, had stayed home in Canada, but still.

Poland was another matter, by the time the Poles figured out what was going on she had already offered help. The thing was that the Germans had slashed Poland's link to the sea, Danzig, and the telegraph cables linking Poland to France, so fast that it took four days to smuggle the message to Britain and another three before the dumbass British Chamber-pot… uh, -lain, allowed the Poles to send the message. By that time Hannah had taken one look at the strategic map and cabled back that the Poles should immediately evacuate their government. She didn't even have a goddamned LANDING ZONE left! By the time she could get there even at maximum speed, taking four and a half days to cross the Atlantic and reach Danzig, she'd just be picking up body bags. Besides, she wasn't about to stick her men somewhere with no room whatsoever to really manoeuvre in the face of an enemy siege. Her whole files of doctrines demanded staying one step ahead of the enemy and never getting cornered.

By April Hannah had relaxed slightly since the French weren't giving even a whimper that said they wanted help in the face of a totally passive Germany, still, she gathered her forces and drilled them for several days before pitching camp (i.e. parking the vehicles) near Halifax to be able to react quickly if anything happened. She was very confident that the French would accept help as soon as the Germans actually attacked. But what came next surprised even her.

* * *

><p><em>Halifax, April 9, 1940<em>

It was shortly before midnight when the message arrived.

The men on-station, and there were several shifts of them, read the military message once before picking up the phone and dialling their General's hotel room number. After one ring, she picked up. Even just having woken up Hannah was completely alert and razor-sharp "Yes?"

"Ma'am, we've got a telegram from Britain." The soldier said.

"What does it say?" Hannah had already gotten up, annoyed that she couldn't go brush her teeth while listening because of the phone handset cable.

"Germany invaded Norway and Denmark."

Hannah frowned "When was this?"

"Today, well, yesterday by local time there."

"Sound assembly, we need to get ready to move out." Hannah was pulling on her uniform pants at the time, holding the phone with one hand.

"They've already fallen, ma'am."

Hannah sighed "Belay the order for assembly. I'll be there right away."

It only took five minutes for Hannah to be ready, and by then her APC was already parked in front of the hotel waiting for her. Boarding the vehicle, she immediately spun the globe around to look at the North Atlantic. Mere moments later, a smirk spread across her beautiful face. She dialled the radio frequency for First Division. "All soldiers of First Division!" She barked, to be heard in all the vehicles the men of said division were sleeping in. "Prepare to move immediately. You can sleep on the ships after loading up and heading out." She ordered as she rolled toward the warehouse complex. "Move to the warehouse complex immediately, we'll need to load up on extra supplies." The men looked at each other questioningly, weren't the ships already loaded with ammunition and fuel? Food was stored nearer the harbour, so what were they going for now?

The answer soon became clear as Hannah ordered the essentially awake men to load up crate after crate marked marked "Dock Part 1, 10 Tons" through "Dock Part 120, 10 Tons". Needless to say, though they didn't really like the task of moving the concrete and steel "crates" with the cranes onto the small trains that would take them all the way to the military docks, the men did as they were told quickly and efficiently. They loaded eight crates—ostensibly maximum weight capacity—onto each flatbed car and tied them down before hopping into the first cars in the trains, one passenger coach per train, and rolling off toward the docks.

When they got there, they transferred the loads without trouble onto the freighters they would be taking across the sea and went back to the warehouses for more parts. It took only an hour to load and secure all the sets of dock equipment and such, packed into crates, which would be needed into the ships. By dawn the ships were fully organized and going through final checklists before launching while the sun was climbing out of the shimmering sea to the east. The ten freighters, with five corvettes, three frigates and a single Light Carrier, the _Saskatchewan_, headed first eastward, then turned northeast with their escorts at the pre-arranged radio signal, every ship flashing the signal back through lights to ensure everyone got it, just in case the radios failed to convey the message.

It was something of a shock for the government of Iceland, when, in the dark early morning hours of April 17, they observed a stately fleet of what appeared to be capital ships with escorts approaching. The shock was dampened only by a radio announcement on all frequencies that Shepard Industries by the authority of the Government of Canada was taking responsibility for the security of Iceland until the war in Europe was over, and the soft hum of aircraft engines far overhead from twelve wheeling V-F-1938Bs (they had been fitted with improved bomb-sights and such, hence the B designation) in fighter configuration. Needless to say, with no armed forces, the Icelanders could hardly refuse the 20,000 trained and completely motorized and/or mechanized troops landing in the harbour of Reykjavik.

The acting chief of police, Einar Arnalds, tried to ask the soldiers that were rolling off the warships in their trucks, APCs and Tanks what the hell they were doing, but they utterly ignored him as they rolled by one vehicle after another. Some inhabitants of the island tried to protest the arrival of the vehicles, but they were moving rather too fast past the parted crowd for the crowd to do much of anything except spit. Even then they had to lead their targets to hit the things, and no one was dumb enough to try throwing anything under the treads.

The soldiers did nothing much, somewhat surprised at the lack of organized resistance but also happy, though wary. They posted signs on the doors of the local paper, radio station and post office. Well, some did, most were fanning out to move across the countryside in clusters of vehicles to search out any resistance, and some others rammed down the front door of the German consulate via inventive use of a T-1936B's 4.5 meter long cannon barrel. It was fortunate that it was a ground-level door, or they would have been forced to actually knock and wait until those inside opened up or they lost patience and broke it down via breaching charge or something. Instead, they had simply driven the tank in reverse at the door in question, hitting the brakes just before impact so that the rear plating of the tank merely lightly cracked parts of the wall instead of bringing half the building down. After all, T-1936s were most recognizable for having a longer front than rear, thanks to the rather defensive engine placement, and for the turret to be slightly set back on the hull. They were also recognizable for their long gun barrel(s) relative to calibre but that was beside the point.

As soon as the tank was away the soldiers that had been in accompanying vehicles, those not staying to watch for snipers through the firing ports, barged in and did a standard sweep-and-clear operation, though they never had to open fire. Consul Gerlach had barely had time to turn his head around as his bathroom door slammed open with a combat boot and two soldiers with SMGs swept the room for threats before one lunged forward, grabbed the back of his collar, and threw him against a wall with his gun levelled at Gerlach's face. "Who are you and what are you doing with those documents?" The soldier shouted "Someone put out that fire!"

Someone opened the safety valve on a fire extinguisher he'd brought before pointing the nozzle at the flames and spraying carbon dioxide gas with a shouted "Got it Sarge!" The extinguisher was from one of the back-up hand extinguishers of the tank. It had an automatic fire suppression system, but there were still two back-up handheld extinguishers that could be used, or, if the crew had to bail out, be used as breaching charges. After all, all you needed to do was point the bottom of the cylindrical thing in the right direction, with enough space to accelerate on flat ground, run away to a safe distance, and shoot the valve off for the thing to make it rocket forward. It had been proven (and in good time would be re-proven on a certain TV show called Mythbusters), though completely by accident, to be able to punch through doors and light walls reliably.

"You do realize Iceland is a neutral country, do you not? I am Consul Gerlach, by the way."

"Heh, Denmark was also a neutral country, but that didn't stop you." The man growled gruffly, his gun still poked into the consul's chest, though he was acutely aware the consul might try something. "Be ready to spend quite a few years in captivity, Consul."

All of Iceland had been thoroughly secured by noon the next day, though it was five days before 15000 Canadian Army regulars arrived with British-type gear (SI's superior gear could not be left unsupervised after all, so average gear was deployed in terms of shore batteries and the like). After that, First Division embarked from the ten piers, complete with cranes, that they'd put together from the concrete blocks ("Dock Parts" and "Crane Parts") they'd brought for rapid assembly, by plopping them down from the stern cranes of the freighters one by one in egg-laying style, using a sort of wire mesh structure to maintain good strength properties for the stacked structure of concrete bricks. Then the Field Dock was left there after the steel I-beams that were to run through the bricks were re-inserted from above to pin the stacks together. The beams had been removed from each block's four holes pre-assembly and welded together to appropriate lengths before being slotted into the concrete blocks. A bilge line was run down to suck up water from the bottom-most blocks, which were only open on the top face, while concrete was poured around the bilge line to cure with the steel rod inside. It was soon left to cure as the whole assembly was capped by mortar and the top slabs that would finish the job (sure, the holding cement wouldn't be as strong as the concrete blocks thanks to water infiltration but they would get the job done). The prefab dock design was intended to build a functional dock that rose above water level, with a sloping water depth of 0 to 8 meters that had a pier 4 meters wide and 12 meters long (the blocks were 4 meters long, 1 meter wide and tall). In other words, it was large enough to embark tanks with a small safety margin of space available.

Almost at a stroke, the Allies had a convoy escort base in the North Atlantic, although only Britain would ever require it, it was still technically SI-owned once enough money was sent to buy the peninsula on which the freshly fabricated and roomy Naval and Air Bases of Keflavik sat. Canada had only to pay for upkeep when it used the facilities, which was a better deal than maintaining the facilities themselves (as they only had to pay for usage for a fraction of the days full-time maintenance would require), but Britain and the other allies were required to pay a small service fee. It wasn't like they had any other choice, as Iceland had entirely been occupied by Canada and the other locations were either unsatisfactory in service or declared off-limits by Canada.

That was in retribution for Britain refusing to buy Canadian grain at Canadian prices, which were somewhat higher than the going rate in the world of 1940, which had in turn be reprisal for Canada denying approval of the Dominion Air Training Plan that Britain had tried to impose on it. After all, the DATP had been absurd in that it insisted on Canada buying British planes when there were thousands of aircraft ready to be thrown into the fight in Canada. The order for planes to France had been shipped later, reducing the number of spare planes, but it hardly mattered, as a new aircraft design was not expected to be fielded until 1941 anyways, along with new tank designs using technological experience from all across the SI armed forces, even experience gained from enemy vehicles or platforms.

A more subtle aspect of this was that it was the first land holdings SI had obtained outside Canada. It was the first land outside Canada upon which the Shepard Industries Maple Leaf with Bars flag (A/N: See the current flag of Canada) could be flown alongside that of whichever country did the civilian administrations. There would be more such holdings in due time, in fact, whole islands would in time fly the flag alongside their civilian flag, or in the case of uninhabited islands just the Maple Leaf. But that is for another day.

* * *

><p>Hannah's three current full divisions were parked in a very friendly (though ostensibly neutral) Spain just behind the extensive border fortifications on the French border. Spain had mimicked the French Maginot Line, except it had purchased most of its fortifications from the export models Shepard Industries offered. Reynaud, the current French Prime Minister, however, was refusing to sign a contract to hire her forces. Ah well, perhaps she would need to wait until Germany actually attacked before being accepted as help while the British were still being shipped over the channel. She could only take comfort in the fact that she knew her mobility to be the best (even against T-40 mobility her vehicles could compare favourably) and could at least meet the Germans in a defence of Paris unless the French let them drive into France unopposed. Of course, if the Germans tried her type of grinding, rolling warfare, and the French, who by all accounts were utterly unprepared (she even met Daladier privately in Spain and he told her that) fell victim, it could take only two weeks to fall if the Germans did everything right. Hell, Swiss intelligence had fed her information (she'd bought it) about the Germans having six or seven armoured divisions on the Luxembourg-Belgian frontier with other motorized units, plus practicing pontoon bridge construction. Hannah privately thought that she needed to get a nice, portable, reliable pontoon bridge design together soon, or her tanks would constantly be stuck with wading rivers in shallow areas.<p>

Unbeknownst to Hannah Shepard, Guderian had managed to rant and rave his way into Hitler's company and persuaded the dictator to use a desperate tactic of rapid massed armoured offensives. He had in fact based his argument on Shepard Industries' stunning successes in Spain, despite the Wehrmacht being thoroughly underequipped for operations of similar scale and without nearly enough elite-trained men to conduct the armoured spearhead. However, as was soon to be proven, it was the thought—and the Flak-88—that counted.

* * *

><p>AN: In real history, the Soviets had superior tanks to the Germans, yet at the start of Barbarossa kill ratios were 6 to 1, favouring the Germans, so don't tell me it is absurd, the numbers I cite here in A-T-1936B vs. T-40 matches. The Germans were mainly employing 50mm long-barrelled guns on Panzer IIIs which had 30 to 50 mm front armour depending on model (later appliqué armour increased it to 80), with NO SLANT! And the Germans still got the job done amazingly well (despite needing to close to 500m to punch through the front of a T-34 I mean T-40)! Therefore it is perfectly plausible that a much-heavier-armoured (80mm vs. 45 at similar slant angles), moderately-better-armed (1.2mm less calibre but nearly half again the barrel length), somewhat-more-mobile (speed a bit better normally but can dive up to 7 meters water), somewhat-more-reliable tank with better training and doctrine could get a 5 or 6 to 1 kill to loss ratio even when cornered.

I look forward to Hannah's opinion on Dunkirk and what her ships will do there, don't you?

REVIEW!


	12. Operation FUBAR

A/N: At this point in historical WWII, the Panzer III (models D through G) had 30mm front, flank and rear armour, with negligible sloping. I am also fielding a historically later model of the Panzer III (H model to be specific) with another 30mm layer of face-hardened steel applied to the front and rear. This means that the H model alone will be invulnerable to A-WTC-40-75A rounds from APCs and AA Tanks. The A-WTC-75-60A is still able to handily cut through this amount of armour at up to 2000 meters range without trouble using standard rounds (75mm gun vs. 60mm total armour, a "no duh" match). Range of the Panzer III D and onward models is around 155 km (40 km/h max), whereas at economy the A-T-1936 (A or B) can run 360 km on a full tank, not counting the up to two full equivalents typically stored in spare fuel canisters, increasing the tank's range to 1000 km plus. The SI tank/APC can also run 45km/h cross-country with reasonable safety and good firing stability, in addition to "Suicide Gear" boosting max speed into the neighbourhood of 55-60 km/h though firing on the move is not possible then. Note that the fuel tanks logic was because if the crew compartment was penetrated, the ethanol tanks alone could have cooked the tank (crew included, except maybe driver if it was a rear shot) off and rendered it beyond repair anyways, so adding more gas canisters only increases capabilities when not penetrated. The whole point is to NOT GET KILLED, not "Survive Being Killed", which is obviously impossible. There is another highly ironic problem: Light Tank Brigades have only slightly more than enough personnel to fully crew their vehicles, so crew are technically more valuable than vehicles most of the time. Actually, all the time, since to quote Hannah in the Code of Conduct on damaged vehicles: "If a vehicle is known to be doomed, get out alive, don't try to save it. You can come back and salvage for parts later after the fires are burnt out, or at least the explosions are done and the fires are extinguishable, but the lives of soldiers are the most important thing. We can afford new vehicles easily, we cannot afford losing too many highly-trained and motivated soldiers. Cockiness is not affordable, remember that or you will find yourself overrun and killed very quickly."

Smooth sailing will officially be upset next chapter, but here we start encountering the first rough patches.

* * *

><p>Chapter 12: Operation FUBAR<p>

_Spanish-French border near Barcelona, May 10, 1940_

Hannah woke up at 0100 hours, just in time to get the report via telegram that a somewhat panicked runner had run to her APC with. Two-thirds of her troops were sleeping while the rest were on high alert in driver and gunner positions of the vehicles. Sure, her infantrymen weren't all the best drivers or gunners, but they had been trained as jack-of-all-trades with slight specialization, and could do any temporary jobs adequately.

Needless to say, mere moments later, four people left the APC and ran back to the telegram station. Hannah Shepard and the messenger burst into the room after her two bodyguard soldiers had scanned the room with their SMGs and declared it clear, as per doctrine in any and all possible close combat scenarios. Then Hannah began to write (or rather scribble) out a message furiously before shoving it at the man who was, well, manning the telegraph. It read "Have heard of Luxembourg Situation, offering services at same terms I give Canada when hiring us for now, we shall negotiate terms later once the German offensive has been blunted. This offer holds until one week from now, I look forward to hearing from you in that time. After that, if you wish to hire at any point, please send basic outlines of pay and contract period, and desired objectives. We will accept up to two rounds of haggling after the initial offer, should you not accept our immediate aid, which is essentially just wages and logistics for the troops in cost."

Much to Hannah's consternation, her obligations to stay a successful businesswoman by stating her terms made Prime Minister Reynaud decline her offer, though he said that if she wanted to act as a volunteer force she would be welcomed into France. The costs had been shouldered by the Canadian Government now but she still wanted to obtain additional funding. Regardless, she ordered her troops to prepare to move out, it would take then a whole day to get to the front in France at economy speed, but they needed to get there to make a difference worth shit. The worst thing however was that the elephantine French bureaucracy made the reply come only on the 15th of May, more than half a week after she made her offer to Reynaud. Hannah was positively appalled by the strategic situation that her long-range recon aircraft had reported to her. The Germans had made a huge armoured lunge into France and seemed to have no signs of stopping, though intelligence she was getting from her contacts suggested the German tanks to be inferior to the Soviet T-40s she had faced in the Winter War. A large enough mechanized force could in theory have wiped the Germans out, but Hannah couldn't afford running her tanks at much more than economy speed for fear of not finding enough gasoline in France for them and their supporting aircraft.

There was also the fact that although Gunter von Esling advocated an attack as fast as possible, ignoring crushing French farm crops, Hannah had a hard time believing the Germans would attack with such an under-motorized force as her aerial reconnaissance was reporting. Her father's friends in Paris (i.e. business contacts, spies, information brokers, etc.) had also leaked to her that just before Reynaud had sent her his telegram, he had phoned Churchill and announced "We have been defeated, we are beaten, we have lost the battle." Even the relatively cockier Brigadiers had agreed that that made the situation rather hopeless, but they needed to whittle down the Wehrmacht as much as possible, hence…

* * *

><p><em>Paris, May 16, 1940<em>

Prime Minister Winston Churchill's aircraft took longer getting down on the ground than it should have, as it took some work convincing the pilots that the gigantic armoured force approaching the city from the south was not a German column. In the end it had come down to the furious air traffic controller screeching "ARE THEY FUCKING SHOOTING AT YOU OR NOT?" to get the point across. Churchill hadn't interfered because he wanted a good look from the air and the units in question were not in fact shooting at him.

Churchill recognized the Maple Leaf with Bars logos painted on the sides of the vehicles, in brown instead of red for better camouflage properties, as they moved into Paris alongside his own limo. "It seems France has chosen to hire Shepard Industries…" He observed dryly as the limo pulled up in front of the French Parliament, then frowned as he observed the frenetic activity and the smoke from burning of documents "What in God's name is happening here?" He asked in French as he entered the conference room where most of the higher-ranking French commanders were gathered. After a basic briefing, he asked "Où est la masse de manœuvre?" That meant "Where is the strategic reserve?"

General Gamelin sighed, the strategic reserve had save Paris in the Great War, but… he drew the curtains so that the assembled officers could see the three SI divisions rolling through Paris, the streets of the city already having been cleared for this express purpose "C'est tout." He stated bluntly.

"WHAT?" Churchill gaped for a moment before regaining his composure. "You are telling me that mercs are your reserves? How many of them are there anyways?"

"Sixty thousand soldiers, something like forty thousand men, the rest women." Gamelin replied dryly in French (A/N: too lazy to write in French here).

"Where and when are they planning to launch a counterattack on the German bulge?" Churchill pressed.

Gamelin shrugged "I do not know, merely arranged the transfer of funds and asked them to do so. I pray they will succeed. Where we have failed with inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, and inferiority of methods, they have only the first weakness, I pray you will succeed." He looked pointedly at Hannah as if questioning why her troops were effectively draining the city's gas stations dry.

Hannah was at that time wondering about just how long she could stave off the defeat of the Allies (minus neutral Spain) on the Continent. There was obviously no chance of getting the huge bonus Reynaud had promised if she could throw the Germans back to their own border, but she could at least ensure as many of the British Expeditionary Force and French Army troops got away to fight another day as she could. Her men were spread through the city buying up every drop of gasoline they could, packing away in their spare fuel canisters as much as possible. They would be ready to move out in half an hour, as an hour had elapsed since they entered the city. "We will at least ensure the BEF and a large portion of the French Army is able to escape intact, Mr. Prime Minister." She stated simply. "Our contract forbids us from doing any less. Is there anything else you would like to ask for?"

"Details on your strategy would be nice, so that we can cooperate…" Churchill started.

He got a brusque shake of Hannah's head, her bun bobbing slightly "No, Prime Minister, the walls have ears, all that the French and BEF need to know is that they should support us when we ask for it, and we shall get the job done to the best of our ability after that."

Churchill frowned "Well… I guess that would make sense… though I still doubt just how well female soldiers will do against the Wehrmacht…"

"We will do well enough, Mr. Prime Minister. Now I must be off, need to organize my forces, right?"

Churchill nodded, noting absently the flash of gold from her five gold stars as Hannah Shepard stood up and walked out of the room with her heavily-armed bodyguards in tow. Then he did an abrupt double-take and his jaw dropped. Reynaud, who was also present, noted this and snickered "It seems, Mr. Churchill, that you are mimicking the response I had when my predecessor, Monsieur Daladier, told me of this particular secret."

"So THAT was the Generalissimo or Supreme Commander of Shepard Industries, huh?" Churchill remarked dryly. "Doesn't she look kind of… young?"

"She's older than she looks, Mr. Churchill, now, onto our next topic…"

* * *

><p><em>France, May 17, 1940<em>

The SI armoured column had headed due north form Paris for several kilometres before turning east abruptly, thundering over the terrain, relying on their fighter screen and camouflage paintjobs, plus sheer speed, to stay concealed. By the next day they were among the positions of the French Second Army about 15 kilometres south of Sedan, facing the German Sixteenth Army, which was supposed to handle the Twelfth Army's flank. A Frenchman named De Gaulle was mounting an attack on Montcornet later that day, according to the man himself when all three divisions of SI forces had rolled past his positions earlier.

Now, where the Germans had expected approximately nothing in terms of armoured forces, they got 2100-plus A-T-1936Bs thundering down their throats in a gigantic mass of moving RHA. The armoured advance was covered by 960 aircraft, 640 (2 of 3 aviation brigades) fitted as fighters with extra machine-gun ammunition chain lengths, boxes of ammunition, and so on, along with 320 fitted as bombers. They each held twenty-five of the recently equipped V-WBA-40A bombs (40kg all-purpose bomb, 32 kg of which is the explosive payload) in sets of five bombs per vertical rack, which could be dropped out in a hail of bombs, throwing either five in a row or ten in two rows at will before the next rack rolled into place to be released when ready. The small bombs were mainly to do damage to armoured targets that were directly hit and any infantry units near ground zero, it was the real reason the bombs were even useful at all. They were designed for saturation-bombing of softer targets where the 400-kg armour piercing bombs were better for bombing large, armoured, strategically important targets such as armoured ships or warehouses. Operational orders for the aircraft, 480 of which were in the air at any one time, all based in Paris off the airfields and flat ground near the city with dug-in vehicles as defences, were to seek out and bomb any enemy artillery positions or concentrations of forces. The fighters were divided into close support and high-level escort, with 200 flying high and 120 with the bombers as close escort/ground support. While the aircraft were distracting enemy forces the ground began to rumble as the first tanks virtually burst over the hills. The German anti-tank guns began firing from as far as could be aimed. The 37mm and new 50mm guns were trying their best, but it was the Flak-88s, a whole kilometre beyond the German line and two kilometres from the advancing vehicles, that made the biggest difference.

The first unlucky Flak-88 shot caught the 80mm thick front armour of an A-T-1936B at a bad angle, glanced off, leaving only a scar, and failed to penetrate, but the second punched into a tank. The vehicle had been pitching forward into a shallow but wide shell crater and it stopped in its tracks halfway into the crater, though the weak secondary power system kept the turret moving despite the main engine shutting down, and the engine itself, with its shock-absorbing system, the same one that reduced noise, had absorbed the much-weakened impact of the shell. Cutting through an equivalent of over 120mm of thoroughly hardened RHA plating (despite the reduced angle) wasn't easy, so the engine managed to stop the round without being torn out into the crew compartment. The return shots on the first Flak-88 to have opened fire missed with the first two shells as even the binocular range-finding system wasn't perfect, but the later shells tore the stationary gun from its mount and thoroughly wrecked it. After all, though the Flak-88 could vertically penetrate up to 100mm reliably at up to 2 kilometres of range, the 30 degree inclination made the effective impact thickness of the armour somewhere around 150mm (projectile motion and firing angle meant the shell had a somewhat downward vector as opposed to directly lateral motion, which would trigonometrically give 160mm) at that range and it couldn't reliably destroy the T-1936 at that range. However, it was mostly a consequence of bad terrain and field-of-fire placement of the guns as opposed to full-entrench that allowed the SI tanks to reliably strike back at such range and blast the essentially unarmoured Flak-88s into oblivion at "relatively" low cost i.e. not having to get close enough for both sides to score clean catastrophic kills.

The French Sixth Army, however, refused to budge from their positions. It seemed that the chaotic mess that was the French Military Command still hadn't managed to get through even to the ARMY level the message that Hannah had overriding power to mobilize any and all forces available. The hiring of SI was a last, desperate bid by Gamelin… and it wasn't working completely right.

By the time they had penetrated fifteen kilometres into the German line and were pounding the rear left flank of Twelfth Army with artillery to falsify an inbound attack, Shepard Industries had suffered its heaviest losses so far. It lost a full thirty-five tanks disabled (mainly only because they swamped the 88s before they could do much) with thirteen irreparable and dismantled for metal plates and scrap parts, plus fourteen APCs disabled and two destroyed, with 93 casualties, including 68 dead. The trucks, having only been for carrying supplies and infantry in this mission, were unscathed thanks to the effective fighting of the air force, which only had to scrap five planes with no aviator losses, as German fighter support was inadequate against the superior numbers of fighters thrown against the bombers to mow them down. However, Hannah knew, based on her having inflicted an estimated 40000 casualties on the Germans, the lack of French cooperation or fighting spirit, and it only having been a small fraction of the total German force, that this was a doomed mission. The fifteen-kilometre advance had taken a full hour and a half to accomplish thanks to the encircling and annihilation of German pockets of resistance, but even in that time the French second Army had not done shit to assist her offensive. The result was her sending back through radio of her command channel, using the aircraft radios' range to get the point across that the Paris detachment was immediately to transmit a message to Canada that read as follows: _Amphibious Aid to evacuate BEF urgently needed, please dispatch no fewer than twenty-five N-TF-1940As as soon as possible with escort to British Channel, Gunter von Esling is to be given command of this task force and determine escorts based on needs to evacuate upward of 1,000,000 soldiers within 4 days. Recommend no fewer than three aircraft carriers be present and that at least 1000 aircraft should be shipped with aircrews and maintenance squads to hammer out improvised airfields in southern England to provide air support. Use any and all means repeat any and all means necessary to ensure this message gets through._

After all, the French air force had mostly been destroyed on the ground despite their purchase of some V-F-1937Bs (most of the order had been cancelled on delivery as the French foolishly reconsidered their budget) thanks to wholly inadequate tactics and doctrine, and improved German Me109 models being a rough match for the aging fighters. Therefore any evacuation would need air support from carriers while airfields in southern England were being established. Hannah hoped Gunter was going to be as good as she believed and knew him to be in combined arms operations, or the Allies might be in big trouble. The main reason she hadn't brought Gunter along to put him in charge of ground forces was hideously obvious: French governmental stupidity would never let a man who was only a second-generation immigrant (his parents had immigrated before the Great War and Gunter had been born in Canada) from GERMANY bear the brunt of the fighting against the invading GERMAN Army. Still, they would not be able to pick and choose who commanded the evacuation fleet so long as Gunter was still a Lieutenant General of Shepard Industries.

As for why Hannah believed there would be an evacuation, she was getting the impression that the Wehrmacht would be able to trap at least a pocket of Allied forces with their race to the Channel, at least elements of the BEF and some elements of the French Army. Even if France didn't just flop, they would need to be saved, and she didn't plan on ploughing her army into an overwhelming mass of German forces, especially if they had many more of those horrifyingly effective Flak-88s, anytime soon. She would smash the Germans' flanks over and over again until she needed to pull out, and then get the hell out with as few casualties as she could. Having inspected the remains of a Flak-88 she had concluded that sooner or later the Germans would put it on a tank, and even if she didn't have to face any such tanks during this campaign the guns would raise her maximum acceptable casualties bar to 3 or 4 percent… It was fortunate that the vehicles could be easily repaired and the engines replaced, or the whole army might end up as sitting ducks. After an hour of maintenance time (and for those not immediately helping, rigging the German equipment with captured German ammunition to make it unsalvageable), the column rolled east before the Germans could catch up to do much of anything.

As for POWs, well, Hannah didn't take any, those who tried to surrender were instructed to run and not come back, and were allowed to flee, given food and water taken from fallen Germans. They were sent away unarmed, ideally carrying doubt, demoralization and despair with them to the Germans… However, Hannah doubted it would work with how badly the French were being beaten up. For all practical intents and purposes, this was like rock-paper-scissors in that she could smash the sharp German scissors which could cut through the soft and inefficient French bureaucratic army, which could in turn put a severe damper on her forces' offensive and defensive potential by insisting on enforcing retarded orders. The real main reasons she'd chosen Canada to start her business in were it wasn't as close-minded, and the bureaucracy was less elephantine than most. The French were being a prime example of why she was glad she chose Canada…

* * *

><p><em>Luxembourg, May 18, 1940<em>

Hannah had successfully topped off her fuel tanks with gasoline from German supplies as she thundered into Luxembourg, very aware of the fact that elements of the German Twelfth Army and remnants of the Sixteenth were behind her and trying to set up an ambush or hit her from the rear. Obviously, they wanted to cut her supply lines. Unfortunately for them, she didn't have supply lines most of the time. Most of the trucks' loads were dedicated to ammunition and fuel for the vehicles, with only enough food to keep the men going for twenty days. Extra supplies were coming in through Spain, but they could be rerouted back any time via the trains, the Logistics Brigade of 4000 soldiers that was split up into Battalion-sized groups to handle the, well, logistics, would take care of them. Hannah felt that in the period from May 16 to June 5 the course of the Continental campaign would be decided.

After topping up her fuel supply Hannah moved out to the north, smashing through horse-drawn German logistics columns like wet paper bags and tearing into infantry formations, even entrenched ones. Flak-88s continued to take their toll on her forces, costing her a hundred or so more men and a few dozen armoured vehicles by the time she reached St Hubert in former Belgium and headed east. She had gotten notice that the German Ninth Army were organizing a sturdy defence to her north and opted to follow the footsteps of the German Second Army, having lost her pursuers, and outflank the Twelfth Army which was hitting De Gaulle's flanks while he engaged Second Army's flanks.

However, by now the sun was setting and her men needed a short break from fighting through enemy position after enemy position. After all, it was not easy for a sixty-thousand-man force to smash its way through over a hundred fifty thousand men and cover a running battle of nearly 250 kilometres (counting detours, encirclements, etc.) in one day. The army arranged itself in night-time formation in the Ardennes Forest and hunkered down for the night, silencing all radio chatter and extinguishing all external lights or light leaks as they waited off the roads. It was possible that the Germans would move by them and not notice them, but other than the watch, who were typically infantrymen who hadn't needed to do much except fire out as well as they could from the moving vehicles and provide assistance whenever needed i.e. to fasten things down, distribute ammunition, be it clips or shells, etc.

Bad news came in by aerial radio broadcast throughout the night, and Hannah listened patiently in her APC, noting down German advances and such on her map and nodding approvingly at the tactics her Aviation Brigades were using to try to slow down the Germans. A German commander named Rommel was said to have a Ghost Division, advancing some 48 kilometres in 24 hours. Hannah cracked a smile at that, thinking: _We meet again, Mr. Former Translator… Well, it seems you are leading the dash to the Channel, too bad I can't stop you guys completely, but I can pick off what I can here, piecemeal…_

Then she revealed the casualty listings for the day and an ugly grimace marred her usually beautiful face. Through the whole day's fighting they had lost upward of 300 men and women killed, for only 150,000 enemy forces engaged and 60,000 estimated kills, using the standard Numerical Adjustment Formula she'd devised for reports on the enemy. It was unacceptable… totally unacceptable. At the beginning of a campaign, to have a 200-to-1 kills to deaths ratios and a 150-to-one kills-to-casualty (dead plus wounded) ratio was terrible, since it was bound to fall even lower once the enemy got over their surprise. Her PMC wasn't nearly the world power she envisioned it to be one day (Her parents thought their daughters were a bit obsessive in near-Hitler style), so she couldn't afford a ratio that might fall below this current one. Of course, that was only when calculating ratios in fighting against mainly infantry columns. Against motorized, mechanized and armoured units the acceptable ratios were somewhat lower.

Hannah was in a pinch, she needed to surprise the enemy by doing something totally atypical and irrational if she wanted to reduce her own casualties and still achieve maximum effects… She could strike northwest into the rear of the German Fourth Army, but the Ninth Army could catch her from the rear at an inopportune time. She couldn't really divide her units or she could be swamped, she could head due west to smash into Second Army's ass, or southwest into Twelfth Army, which was currently beating up the retarded French Second and Sixth Armies. She could also head north and then east to attack Ninth Army…

She could only choose one choice, and in the end, she chose what probably seemed to be the most insane choice: She headed east again as the sun rose over the Ardennes Forest and her watch men roused their compatriots, then dozed themselves while the vehicles rumbled into motion eastward. "Men, we are going to head toward the rising Sun." she had announced via runners to the column once they'd assembled east of the forest they'd sheltered in for the night. It would prove to be a fortunate choice for both sides, The Germans would lose a voice of caution, and the SI troops would not walk into dug-in Flak-88s and Panzer IVs in any direction. The latter, despite a fairly low-velocity 75mm gun for infantry support, actually had a chance of breaching the armour of an APC at reasonable ranges without itself being scrapped first by the rapid-fire 40mm long gun of the APC in question. That had been learnt rather painfully… Well, at least the Germans didn't have the rocket artillery the Soviets had (and failed to deploy properly, though Hannah doubted the Germans would be so hampered by political commissars), right?

* * *

><p>AN: The Germans only figured out Blitzkrieg AFTER it worked, so France was lost not so much to overwhelming superiority by the Germans as to stupidity and bureaucracy by the French. In this case, the Germans learnt their tactics from elsewhere, but hey, SOMEONE had to come up with it first, right?

* * *

><p><em>Belgium, May 19, 1940<em>

Thankfully the Germans did not have rocket artillery yet. However, they did get a nasty shock when the SI column, rolling north after reaching northern Luxembourg again, overran von Rundstedt's HQ near St. Vith in former Belgian territory COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT. It would be one of the greatest facepalm moments of the War for all sides according to later history books. For lack of better explanations, Hannah only forced the attack when she figured that defences and dug-in troops had to mean something important. She encircled the fortified area and rained down a hail of 100mm howitzer shells on it at a rate of 10 rounds per minute per gun, with all 324 guns across three divisions active. After she'd realized her artillery support's numerical inadequacy in Spain, she had increased via towed artillery the gun count to 24 per Motorized, 30 per Mechanized or Light Tank Brigade. Half were truck-bed-mounted and half were towed by the same trucks, though sometimes in tight spaces they would be brought onboard for convenience of movement, the guns couldn't fire with such cramping. Even the Aviation Brigades had 5 guns each, purely mounted, for potential counter-battery fire against artillery or hostile AAA that could threaten airfield operations. Usually it was literally just a field that had been run over a few times by the armoured vehicles of the Brigade to flatten it down somewhat for aircraft operations.

After 10 minutes of thundering down artillery fire and firing over thirty-two thousand shells (there were reasons her infantry trucks were loaded down with more than ten extra howitzer shells to be passed up in addition to tank shells and other ammo) the armoured charge from all sides began. German anti-tank guns fired back feebly, most of the gun crews and guns having been damaged or killed by the dense artillery barrage, and managed to knock out a few tanks and APCs by mostly dumb luck (88s had been prioritised in the barrage). One 37mm shell actually managed to disable an APC's turret by wedging itself in the very narrow (something like 3cm, just enough to fit in a cleaning rod to clear it out, or squirt enough water in to rinse it out) gap between the turret and hull. That APC, unable to turn its turret thanks to the jammed shell and the two grooves in the armour it had carved for itself, slowed to a halt to allow more able units to advance, the loose formation allowing lopping around disabled or destroyed vehicles.

The fact that the three remaining Flak-88s were employing AP ammo instead of standard APHE anti-aircraft shells proved rather disastrous. Two advancing tanks became mobility kills (propulsion disabled), one became a firepower kill (the gun barrel was sheared in half so the gun was basically useless against any but the softest and nearest of targets) and six more tanks and APCs went up in the typical catastrophic kill patterns, the turret soaring into the air on a pillar of fire before smashing back down, upside-down, onto the burning hull. A few of the infantry in the APCs managed to escape safely thanks to emergency blast venting technology, on the sides of the crew compartments, restricting the damage to what the bulkheads could handle. However most of the crews and carried infantry (where applicable) burned, completely unaware thanks to the shrapnel from metal and bones alike, that had lacerated them thoroughly enough to kill them outright.

The 88s were shown no mercy though, a deluge of shells struck their unarmoured forms as soon as they were detected and tore them apart. With a single command of "Do not let the 88 crews get away, all acceptable methods authorized once POSIDENT achieved." over the Supreme Command Channel the battle grew dirtier. Positively identified 88 crews who tried to run were gunned down mercilessly while those who surrendered were actually taken prisoner instead of allowed to run away like the others had been. They would have to hitch a ride in the trucks, with hands and feet tied together and gagged, for now. Usually the policy was to be nice to prisoners, just so that after they were released they'd soften the enemy's will to fight to the death, but in this case there wasn't much choice, the marauding column was going to be mobile, so could not afford too many niceties.

In the end, Hannah was rather shocked when she realized exactly what she'd besieged and swarmed at the cost of over thirty vehicles and something like a hundred fifty men. She'd actually managed to capture the HQ of Army Group A of the Wehrmacht… astonishing. It also meant she couldn't stay behind enemy lines for much longer, as an Army Group command center falling would attract vastly more foes than she would be able to deal with in a pitched battle. Her whole string of successes relied on surprise and local superiority by concentrating huge armoured forces against points of the enemy line and shredding them utterly. The German infantry did not have much in the way of capable anti-tank weapons, and German tanks, inferior to the T-40 which was barely able to stack up against her T-1936Bs, were no match. However, numbers mattered, and if they could stall her long enough via a swarm of tanks to let the 88s take their toll on her forces from good ranges, with fighters occupying her air support… she would be screwed. Of course her artillery could do a lot of damage on the 88 positions, but the Germans could bring in their own artillery to occupy her forces by diverting them to much-needed counter-battery fire. Also, although she was self-reliant for supplies, she didn't exactly have the amount of artillery ammunition to fight a long-term pitched battle. She could only afford to take down one more Army before she would have to pull back. The Luftwaffe was also slowly doing damage despite her air defences and fighter/bomber support, which was dwindling slowly.

"All units head north, U-25-20 to port." The command, sent on open channels, was obviously heard by the Germans, so they started preparing defences near Army Group B's HQ positions in the north. Army Group A's HQ had been captured because it was only moderately defended, and even then mostly against air raids (hence there had originally been 15 Flak-88s, 12 of which had been obliterated by artillery barrage). What they did not know was that the cod of U-25-20 meant a simple manoeuvre: Head 25 km in one direction, turn in direction specified, go 20 kilometres that way, and turn again to make a large U-turn. That would bring them into the ass end of the Ninth Army, which had mostly fortified its southern and eastern approaches. Obviously, this was very painful for the Germans.

The end result was the routing of a large portion of the Ninth Army at a fairly low cost of only 43 vehicles, mostly to Flak-88 fire, and over 200 SI casualties. In exchange, the Germans paid with every man who didn't surrender and/or run away plus the Flak-88 crews, a total of a bit over 70,000 soldiers from the eight divisions (about 180,000 soldiers) of the Ninth Army. The forward defences that had been facing south and east had been bombed extensively by bombers as support for the attack, resulting in the disabling of the Flak-88s, often by concentrated dive-bombing with the heavy 400kg armour-piercing bombs more often used to assault ships. The ground units had after all slammed directly into the rear of the force, coming from the north like a great hammer with a bit over 2000 tanks (including those patched and repaired in the field) and their support vehicles. The German defences had to be manhandled around to better positions to repel an attack from the north instead of south, and that meant going from hull-down on the northern slope to being on the southern slope instead. In that time the rolling wall of steel had blown apart most of the German tanks and anti-tank guns. Their 75mm long-barrelled guns could reach four or five kilometres and still retain reasonable damage characteristics with standard APHE rounds, though they weren't that accurate at that sort of range against any mobile target or when the tank was on the move, but when both parties were stationary…

The Shepard Industries First Corps as it called itself nowadays was by now done what they could do. The other German formations had tightened up enough on all sides or were far enough away that rushing to engage risked the SI flanks. It was time to pull out to the south to rest and take time to regroup, as in the chaos of battle organization below company level was basically no longer existent. The damaged vehicles that had been restored to functionality needed to be patched properly with the salvaged plates from thoroughly wrecked vehicles, the crews needed some down-time, and most alarmingly the ammunition needed replenishing as they were down from 300% all ammunition to a "mere" approximate 100% base number for 100mm howitzer shells, 60% 75mm tank shells, 110% 40mm shells, 85% machine-gun ammunition and 175% rifle ammunition. Pistol and SMG ammo was still good, but they needed to break out soon. The howitzers each only had 100 shells left… and the machine-gun ammunition would need to be conserved in favour of infantry sniping from firing ports for the next engagement against defensive infantry formations. Looted petrol from abandoned German stores had kept the fuel reserves at a good 220%, but that was useless without the shells for guns. Her supply balance system had focused on long-range mobility, but in this small-area campaign it wasn't helping. Still, it at least made sure she could flee all the way to Spain with at most one gas stop on the way if need be…

* * *

><p><em>France, May 20, 1940<em>

Hannah had looped west around the Ardennes Forest for fear of mines on the narrow forest paths, blowing up a couple more German supply convoys on/in her way in the night (well, early morning if you wanted to call it that). Apparently thanks to her rioting around the German Armies had been given free reign thanks to the loss of Rundstedt's cautiousness, and had already hacked through to the English Channel by the previous evening. Bomber attacks had taken their toll on her forces slowly but surely, despite being shot down by the dozens by her fighter screen, so she needed to get out of there before her casualties grew truly intolerable. However, the bad news from the French armies actually seemed to have a positive effect on the morale of her men, despite an air of mourning and blazing fury for their dead and wounded comrades. The general consensus from whispered conversations she overheard seemed to be "I am SO glad to be serving in the SI military… we've lost, what, six, seven hundred soldiers dead or wounded, traded for a hundred and twenty THOUSAND Germans? Much better than those retarded French commanders, losing to inferior equipment…" When Hannah finally located the talking men she noted that it was a man with an arm in a sling and a bandage wrapped around his head, visible just beneath his helmet, who was talking. From the looks of it his forehead had been cut by a piece of shrapnel and his arm had been broken, likely from being thrown into something or someone from sudden vehicular deceleration, the classic wounded soldier image.

Hannah merely walked by on her survey of her forces, now that they were behind French lines, she could do so with a semblance of security. She'd sent 1st Motorized with all the prisoners to Brest where they would be picked up by SI ships, the same ones awaiting her forces for a possible retreat, to be taken to Britain as POWs (including General Rundstedt). However, the sense of tranquility and rest was soon shattered by bad news from Paris. Gamelin had been fired, replaced by Weygand, who had, the previous night, declared his first duty as Commander-in-Chief to be getting a good night's sleep. Hannah sighed again, the Battle for France was well and truly lost now… not that it wasn't before, mind you.

As soon as the survey and reorganization was complete, the Shepard Industries forces moved west at economy speed toward the German spearhead's positions. Hannah had already determined that as long as the French were willing to be beaten, she would allow them to be, though she might give the French Parliament a few good tank rounds after the war for being so incompetent. Besides, she couldn't take on the Germans on her own if the French weren't willing to cooperate. She was ready to do what she could, but if the French insisted on losing like this she could hardly save them. According to intel reports, Weygand was taking time making visits to foreign dignitaries, which qualified for "accidental" run-over by tank if the idiot was still alive after the war. The man immediately made it onto Hannah's Black List of those to ensure died either during or after a war. In fact, his name was just after Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, and those of Hirohito's children who participated in the war or the war against China.

Her soldiers got to take a break as no directives were coming from the foolish French High Command and Hannah knew the strategic situation to be hopeless just for that if not any other reason, but the situation in the Dunkirk Pocket grew direr by the day. Reports were coming in regularly from Gunter, and things were NOT looking up.

* * *

><p><em>England, May 24, 1940<em>

The convoy had moved at economy speed, 22 knots, for most of the trip and made it within 5 days, with 1 day taken to load up all on the goods Gunter believed might be needed, including large packages of, of all things, plain bricks. His subordinates questioned the wisdom of this, since if they were going to build a dock, why did they not bring more of the hardened and bolt-ready concrete Dock Sections for the job? Gunter had explained that those sections were for the construction of bases on the recently purchased Islands of Scilly. The five islands off the southwest tip of England were territory bought from Britain. Ostensibly it was in exchange for providing freight services across the Atlantic using their convoy system, which was far more resistant to subs than anyone else's, and the 100 escort ships assigned to support British convoys for the duration of the war, but that was beside the point.

The facts of the matter were that they could ship 500,000 tons of supplies in one convoy of 25 ships, plus several tens of thousands more tons carried by the typical six-corvette, three-frigate, one-destroyer, and one escort carrier armed escort. It took them only between 5 to 6 days to cross the Atlantic at Economy Speed to Plymouth or Liverpool, depending on detours made, and 6 to 7 days to return to Canada, usually Halifax harbour. There were eight such convoy groups available, and usually they made continuous trips. The day taken at either end of the trip usually consisted of offloading the freighters onto the docks, starting with the most repair-needy (usually this meant zilch as the ships were VERY low-maintenance) and then proceeding to maintenance where applicable. Every four cruises the ships would be put in for maintenance such as scraping off barnacles, replacing damaged plates, etc. This process reduced the average rate of crossing to twelve ships per day, with average round-trip time 15 days for each 25-ship convoy group of the 200 freighters currently available, though 25 were in reserve for emergency missions such as these and 25 more were in the works along with the destroyer that would be assigned to their escort group. The typical convoy trip across the Atlantic included one or two U-boats sunk and no losses other than possibly some skirt armour plates and RARELY a compartment or two flooded. This was in marked contrast to everyone else who tended to lose at least a couple ships per convoy and even more without convoy.

This particular special convoy had offloaded its goods to the Logistics Brigade of 4000 men stationed on the Islands of Scilly, with one Battalion responsible for each of the four larger islands. Fourth Battalion, the one handling the northwest large island, was also responsible for the smaller island just to their southwest and for maintaining the mine system around the islands. To this end they had two Corvettes fitted with minesweeping and mine-laying capability, in addition to a stockpile of mines, based off the Deployable Dock Pier that was in the small bay the island formed with its neighbour to the east. The southeast island of the group however was the one with the real naval base on its northwest face, a large airfield was also built on the island, with two runways 2.5 kilometres long and three one-kilometre runways perpendicular to the long ones. These were part of the real reason Britain allowed Canada to acquire the uninhabited islands as its territory: The funds paid and the promise to build a large base complex that British aircraft were welcome to use. The cost simply of maintaining the aging fleet of dreadnoughts inherited from the Kriegsmarine at Scapa Flow meant Britain could not afford the vast investment of operating a huge complex in an unnecessary area. If Canada wanted to build a large base further to the west of any British naval base in the British Isles, they were welcome to.

The northeast and southwest islands were fitted with all sorts of shore defences. The largest were S-WM-60A mounts embedded in concrete fortifications, mounting triple N-WC-300-50As in the same style of SI Destroyers, with S-WM-30A mounts, the same as those on Corvettes, fitting dual N-WC-100-60A guns for closer support. Additional S-WM-15A mounts provided bases for the rapid-deployment Anti-Aircraft Turrets (dual 40mm AA) and Pillboxes, along with Camo Pillboxes, dotted the ground, linked by concrete tunnels. These islands were each equipped with a single airstrip of 1500m running roughly NW to SE for aviation facilities and one of the Deployable Dock Piers.

The northwest island also had an airstrip of the same size, but the southeast one took the cake with its airfield compound and ten Deployable Dock Piers. There were anti-sub minefields across much of each exit passage with only narrow zones defended by anti-sub netting open in each. In other words, with only a bit over 20 million dollars invested, Canada owned a well-defended fleet dock, though it held no dry-dock, sub pens, or any of those advanced facilities at the moment, it was good enough to have a large set of underground warehouses/hangars and be able to field massive numbers of aircraft if the time came.

Now, the time had come, and the aircraft, already assembled instead of their usual crate form when shipping, were lifted one after another off the freighters to the docks, where they were taken away by waiting trucks. Many more in crate form were unloaded once all the aircraft were off, and men quickly set to work assembling the planes while the rest secured the aircraft and struck them below ground into the fortified underground hangars. The V-F-1938B had a strike radius of up to 750 kilometres loaded with 1000kg of ammunition, with external fuel tanks, the radius increased to a solid 1250km. Dunkirk and the German armies approaching it would be well within reach from here. If the worst came, they could easily strike at the German bases bound to be on the west coast of France, especially against U-boats, and the Germans wouldn't be able to do much in return as the Royal Navy was too strong, the aircraft fielded from this area too many, and/or the underground warehouse system made bombing utterly ineffectual. Even the tank farm was underground and scattered among the islands, with aircraft landing where convenient for fuel if needed. The warehouses of the SE island were enough to hold up to 500 aircraft and the other three were each able to handle up to 150, though safety cut the numbers to 400 and 120 respectively. Currently all they acted as was a deposit of planes while the heavily loaded freighters moved out of the well-dredged waters of the area on their way to Plymouth.

There, on May 24, Gunter von Esling offloaded no less than 400,000 tons of food, fuel, steel and other goods that had been brought to Britain by the convoy, which acted as a courier for ships of other companies or nations. The U-boat-proof and rapid-delivery reputation had spread quickly after all, and SI was making a good amount of money from the work, enough to upkeep the base complex at Scilly at least. Canada might have a small military budget compared to, say, the US, but efficiency mattered, oh it mattered…

Gunter had communicated his intent to the British and was authorized to begin the operation Lord Gort and his assistants had originally planned. The British called their part of the operation "Dynamo". Shepard Industries employees called it "Operation FUBAR" for the sorry state the BEF and what few French troops remained with them were in. The operation called for a large amount of air support, and so the planes at Scilly were allowed to operate out of airports in Southern England if needed. Well duh they were needed… every Spitfire, Hurricane, and other fighter the British could throw into the air were occupied holding off the enemy aerial offensive along with SI fighters based at Scilly. After all, fuel did not restrict air time as much as ammunition at such close ranges where time over target was up to one and a half hours with the sort of range add-on fuel tanks gave SI planes. This was especially as the planes were fitted as fighters and that meant the add-on fuel tanks could be installed in the bomb bay to not affect aerodynamics and allow for conservation of resources.

One thousand SI aircraft would be standing toe to toe over Dunkirk with nearly twice their number of German planes, but the Germans mainly had bombers flying ground support, and the British were providing a lot of support with hundreds of Spitfires and Hurricanes. The former was slightly better armed than the V-F-1938B but wasn't nearly as manoeuvrable, while the German Me109 had improved enough to take the V-F-1938 on equal terms in everything except manoeuvrability and durability. The Canadian units would suffer casualties, but they would inflict far worse on their fragile foes.

On the ground and at sea, the situation was rather… different. The empty freighters, even with 10,000 tons ballast water for stability, had a draught of only 3.9 meters. Hence it wasn't much difficulty for the crews to use lifeboats to shove the bricks Gunter had brought, now cemented into small slabs, overboard to pave a submerged pier into the water, replacing the destroyed dock facilities. Once they were deep enough, the freighters themselves took care of dropping blocks of bricks into the water to form a dock the troops could climb onto ladders from. The freighters then parked themselves alongside, with several parked along the 1400-yard East Mole for soldiers to swarm onto in organized droves as soon as Lord Gort had issued the order for retreat. Each freighter had enough cargo decks, 4-meter-tall cargo decks, that they could hold up to 20,000 tons of cargo, so it was no problem to put 20,000 or 30,000 men inside, however, for safety's sake, only 10,000 soldiers were allowed onboard into the lower decks of each ship as ballast for the first runs by regulation. In actual fact, there was never enough time to load much more than that on any ship, let alone per ship.

On the first day, May 25, the operations were interrupted by enough enemy bombing attempts that only the five ships on the East Mole got to load up to any real extent. They managed to each board a good 6000 to 10000 men via their large tank-boarding ramps before being forced to cast off, with two sustaining slight bomb damage to their superstructures. One freighter on the beaches however managed to get hit in such a way that it disabled two of the three engine rooms, the two that were side by side (separate from the third, centerline one by two bulkheads). It limped away with only one of its two S-CL-20x10B cargo lifts and 30 thousand of 90 thousand fitted horsepower operational. The 40mm AA guns on all ships were constantly pounding out a steady rhythm off AA fire against diving, screeching Stukas as the fleet while swarms of fighters clashed overhead, including the escorts that had used their shallow draught to close in toward the beach and use their fast-attack boats to ferry loads of men and materials off the beach. In the first day, 49,000 men made it off the beaches at Dunkirk in the two hours the transports (limited by their air support staying time) were present. With the submerged brick paths set up, the evacuation could come even faster in the coming days…

Two and a half hours later, the British sent their own ships into the harbour as the SI ships were offloading their loaded men at beaches and harbours all along the southeast coast of England. The SI air cover screen had fully returned in strength and were wheeling across the skies over Dunkirk like a swarm of very angry bees chasing off the enemy planes as best as they could. Gunter met with Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay to discuss the next day's operations, since it was agreed to concentrate operations into at most two massive runs per day, one for the slower British vessels. The result, well…

* * *

><p><em>British Naval HQ, Beneath Dover Castle, May 25, 1940<em>

Ramsay, in charge of Operation Dynamo, was rather irritated at his visitor, the guy was late by twenty minutes, but then he heard a commotion outside his door and the sounds of his guards arguing with other men… He opened the door then gaped as he saw his visitor and the SI soldiers guarding him "Aren't you German?" He asked, and then looked back at his other guest, Winston Churchill, "Are you seeing this?" Ramsay asked incredulously, Churchill shrugged.

"My parents were, I'm Canadian through and through. Shepard Industries Lieutenant General Gunter von Esling at your service, Vice Admiral." Gunter extended a hand, and Ramsay eyed it suspiciously before shaking it reluctantly. "Now, Vice Admiral, we need to hammer out just how this op will work, I had my ships lay down enough brick plates on the beach zones to allow the troops to use them as footsteps while they are on their way to the big ships. The freighters are squat enough to operate with no ballast water in good conditions, but I'm not expecting that, they have 3.9 meters draught ballasted, but their boarding ramps' heights still allow them to be used on the East Mole, we got about 50,000 men today, and the pocket is just getting smaller by the hour, so we need to get all 500,000 Allied troops in the pocket that we can get out into England as soon as possible. Thanks to the chaos my superior wreaked in the back of the German lines, it seems that the Panzer units have lost all control and are hammering their way steadily in around the pocket. Unfortunately the French are too dumb to put my superior's ground troops to work, but that doesn't mean we can't save all those men and more. We need to evacuate as much of the French Army, from ANYWHERE, as possible before France falls. They will be needed to form part of the army needed to strike back into the Continent once Hitler's offensives have been blunted elsewhere, for example in North Africa. If it comes down to it, they will also be excellent fighters in homeland defence of England should this island be invaded."

Even Churchill's mouth was open wide enough to catch flies (i.e. not very) by the end of the spewing of sensible strategic plans "That was rather blunt, Lieutenant General…" The Prime Minister stated with a smile moments after his recovery.

"Well your guards insisted on wasting thirty minutes of my time just now…" Gunter eyes the obviously subdued guards evilly. "So I had to save some time."

Ramsay nodded in understanding "Well said, General. I am sorry for the delay."

Gunter nodded "I am too, and so are the men on the beaches. We might have been able to launch another rescue wave before sundown… but we can do it at night, no problem. The only thing I found was that we didn't have quite enough light vessels to fully conduct rescue at maximum possible rates, Mr. Prime Minister, is there anything you can do about that?" He looked toward Churchill pleadingly.

"We've registered all the usable craft in southern England, we'll gather them to sail with the Royal Navy ships tomorrow… they're a bit too slow to be used with your fleet, they'll just drag you down." Churchill smiled "I wasn't a Sea Lord for no reason, you know."

Gunter nodded "I'll thank you for the soldiers those boats will rescue, Mr. Churchill."

The coordination and plans went rather quickly after that, including sharing information on kill counts. The SI ships had counted no fewer than 57 Stukas shot down (some weren't certain kills) by their 40mm batteries and estimated 80-plus kills by fighter craft with the RAF contribution being about 70 kills. The best thing about the 40mm gun's 900-gram round (600 grams high explosive in the HE variant) was that a hit was almost a guaranteed kill against most aircraft. Shepard Industries had lost 15 aircraft in combat, 11 aircrew (4 captured), and the RAF lost 21 planes with 9 aircrew killed. It was agreed that the SI panes were to be allowed unlimited access to airfields in Britain for the duration of the operation and that it would be for free as opposed to a paid op. Gunter communicated it to Hannah when he got back to his command vessel, the N-ED-1938A destroyer _Montreal_…

"Good, you're getting more politically savvy, with all the backing we have from the Canadian government you don't need to charge them anything for this mission, but if they want us to spearhead a counterattack on the Continent, well…" She left the rest unsaid.

* * *

><p><em>Dunkirk, May 26-28, 1940<em>

Operation FUBAR (The BEF thought the name was hilariously appropriate) managed to depart with 105,000 men in the 13 freighters deployed on the first run, putting thousands of men in each freighter using the paved submerged paths, the East Mole and everything from lifeboats to Fast-Attacks to Corvettes for close approach to the shoreline and pick-ups. The smaller ships had taken up 22000 of the 105 thousand men, packed into their hulls like sardines, and transferred even more onto the freighters by use of the boarding ramps on the clear parts of Corvette hulls, the aft section. That was once additional ballast water was taken on in deeper water out where the big freighters were, to lower the ramp deck level to be roughly even with the Corvettes. The bad weather was counteracted only by the incredible stability of the squat ships—wider than they were tall—and the lack of bombing by the Luftwaffe due to poor weather.

The second wave, ploughing into the beach areas once air cover was again on its way, consisting of Royal Navy vessels (especially destroyers) and a volunteer fleet of civilian boats of shallow draught, was rather less productive. Even with men packed into them like sardines, the ships could only manage to take off a bit over 40000 men in the two hours they had. It was simply because they didn't have the cargo space, or the four giant boarding ramps per side, that the freighters did. These were built to take anything up to two and a half tanks rolling down the ramps at once without strain.

The third wave, the 12 freighters not committed in the morning (there was only so much space on the beaches after all, and only so many fast-attack boats for ferrying…) wasn't as good as the first. They managed to pluck some 60000 men from the shore, but the increasingly bad weather made life rather difficult, even more than it had for the second wave.

The next day, May 27, was even worse, a storm had rolled in and the soldiers on the shore were stoically standing in the wind and rain in ordered lines awaiting rescue while not far behind them their comrades battled it out against the Germans in increasingly desperate holding actions. The SI freighters managed to fish 40,000 men from the waters while the British vessels pulled off 34000. This was as the British were rather more desperate to rescue their own men, unlike the SI forces which were obliged only to try as hard as possible. Only 162000 remained in the shrinking perimeter, supported only by the fire of the ship guns and what bombers the allies could put into the air.

May 28 was utterly impossible for the operations of the ships and the Luftwaffe alike. Well, the ships could have handled it, but the men trying to board could not have, and so it was another day of furious holding actions by the brave soldiers on the ground, until they witnessed… a miracle. The Wehrmacht parted like the Red Sea and the breakthrough force from the south, bearing a now familiar logo, turned east to do what damage they could while the Germans tried to close up formations again. Gunter's message to Hannah had prompted her to launch an attack beginning two days ago. It staved off defeat for the remaining soldiers of the Dunkirk Pocket…

The SI column had left over two thousand burning German tanks in the wake of her 1900-tank advance, along with many others, but her forces had paid heavily, losing over two hundred vehicles disabled (and to be patched up en route) or destroyed by German artillery and Flak-88s. Her offensive had begun by stabbing north around Ham, advancing north to Cambrai, arcing east to Beaumont, heading north to Brussels and them ploughing west all the way to Lille where four divisions of the BEF and the whole French First Army was still trapped. With them in tow the column had smashed into the German advance from behind, battering through what was left of Ypres and blasting into the pocket from the south. Then it headed east toward Ostend. The plan was to smash elements of the German Eighteenth Army as a final gesture before heading back to French turf via straight line to Amiens, shredding anything in the way. This time the units carried less artillery ammunition, opting for more 75mm and 40mm shells, and only carrying 200% fuel. Still, 2000 superior tanks fully fuelled and loaded up to fight was damned SCARY for the Germans… even if over fifty of those tanks had to be patch-repaired and another fifty or so stripped for parts in the field after the attack. The Germans couldn't do a thing about the lethal slippery fish-like force swimming through their lines, merely get out of the way, hunker down and hope to get good damage control results.

* * *

><p><em>Dunkirk, May 29, 1940<em>

Of the 162000 remaining soldiers in the harbour not committed to the final defence group, nearly four thousand were killed that day by a hail of bombs and artillery fire from the Germans while what was left of their armour and infantry tried to advance again in the face of staunch and newly spirited resistance. Only 53000 men were rescued by the SI convoys thanks to the incredible amount of planes the Luftwaffe had been able to manage for one massed strike, and of the remaining 105000, 35000 were extracted by the courageous small ships and Royal Navy vessels. Their extraction effort got more than either ONE of the two SI journeys, which were more safety-oriented, knowing the pocket could hold for at least another day and a half safely now that their leader had blunted the teeth of the Germans.

In fact, the _London Times_ that day published a cartoon depicting a solid mass of tanks painted with small SI logos (Maple Leaf with Bars) thundering ahead of a huge dust cloud out of which were flying burning swastikas, German tanks, and artillery pieces while Stukas fell from the skies trailing fire. The drivers and turret crews of the tanks were shown as picking their teeth with toothpicks and driving unbuttoned and obviously having fun. That was while German troops (by the insignia) in the extreme foreground (bottom corners of the frame) were shown screaming and running for their lives. The caption was "Behold: Shepard Industries" The next cartoon over was "What Hitler Has and Has Not." The first frame showed Hitler touting his stuff from guns to tanks to a giant Swastika, and Churchill rolling his eyes. The second frame showed Churchill grinning as Hitler looked up in shock and a giant shadow fell over him. The last frame was the dictator being crushed, with only his feet visible, under a gigantic red maple leaf with distinct tread marks cutting across Hitler's body, and Churchill laughing.

The next day, May 30, the evacuation went on day and night as the Germans were pushing even harder now. The SI ships each ran at least two trips as they were forced away by bombing and strafing by the Luftwaffe with being in the area long enough. Torpedo boat attacks repelled by a combination of corvettes, fast-attacks, and the 40mm dual-gun turrets in previous days had stepped up considerably, and an SI Corvette was sunk in the British Channel after taking three torpedoes and an 1100-pound (500-kg) armour-piercing bomb that broke its back and too many compartments to stay afloat. It was the first SI ship lost in the war. It would not be the last. But it was worth it, by 2 AM the evacuation was complete, even pulling out the supposed rearguard French forces after laying thousands of mines in the ruins of the city as a final "Fuck You" gesture.

Needless to say, the Germans got a lot of nasty and lethal surprises when they finally crept into the city. But Operation FUBAR was declared a total success despite losing quite some numbers of ships (SI ships were typically shorter targets and thus were harder to hit than British vessels). 490000 soldiers had been safely evacuated from Dunkirk despite the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht's best efforts, and over a million more would be picked up from the west coast ports of France as the French Army finally decided to listen to Hannah's forces and retreat in a relatively ordered fashion once Paris was surrounded. The 58000-some remaining soldiers of Shepard Industries First, Second and Third Divisions were also withdrawn to Britain. SI convoys plus some other large convoys of slower, smaller ships kept the whole country, including the 1.5 million Allied soldiers evacuated from the Continent, fed, clothed and equipped for war. However, despite the Allies' best efforts and the U-boats' first Happy Time ending as SI accepted more and more cargo transfer contracts, the worst was still to come…

* * *

><p>AN: Historical plausibility is maintained here, just by the way, surprising marauders in the back of enemy territory tends to stumble upon surprising things and do huge amounts of damage (during Verdun in WWI a French artillery man accidentally hit a German ammo depot holding 450,000 large-calibre rounds, completely ruining the German artillery supply system and this resulted in the German artillery on the front being smashed badly). Also, since orders were all that was holding back the Panzer units, cutting off the head of the snake just makes the rest so much more dangerous in this case (see Wikipedia).

REVIEW!


	13. The Truth Comes Out

A/N: Seriously, I'm trapped by physics now, so all I can do to hurt SI is, as shown eventually here, PR. Yes SI has higher standards, because they need to, a PMC cannot display the inefficiency and casualty rates of a nation's military, after all, if it wants to survive. Later on, recruiting from Central/South America, Africa and Southeast Asia will allow for survival despite elevated casualty rates, since demands on employers by employees are less in those areas. People from there are (no offense to anyone) more inclined to be happy to join an organization with a kill-to-loss ratio of typically between 10-to-1 to 50-to-1 as opposed to becoming a collateral damage statistic or being cannon fodder.

* * *

><p>Chapter 13: The Truth Comes Out<p>

_Southern England, June 10, 1940_

Hannah was working out plans for deployment of the defensive installations that would be built around the airfields her soldiers were soon to be hammering out in the middle of England. They were well north of the Thames just for safety from invasion. The fields would be built as soon as they managed to organize the camps for the 1.5 million allied soldiers now in England, who were mostly camped around Nottingham. It was during this work that the radio volume of her APC, which was parked inside a large "command tent" (it would be surprising for any saboteurs to find 60mm of RHA instead of 4mm or so of canvas) where many officers were working around it, was turned up. She looked questioningly at the driver through the open bulkhead door before realizing it was in fact an important broadcast the men had picked up on and tuned her into. "Turning once again, and this time more generally, to the question of invasion, I would observe that there has never been a period in all these long centuries of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our people." It was Winston Churchill making another speech "In the days of Napoleon, of which I was speaking just now, the same wind which would have carried his transports across the Channel might have driven away the blockading fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many Continental tyrants. Many are the tales that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous manoeuvre. I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. We must never forget the solid assurances of sea power and those which belong to air power if it can be locally exercised. I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty's Government — every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France," Hannah snickered at this, like they were still able to with the French already suing for peace… "We shall fight on the seas and oceans," Of course, her PMC's Atlantic Transport Policy was already dedicated and working hard to fight back the U-boats and surface raiders of the Germans. "We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the new world, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old." She got the general gist of the speech from the peroration and listened to the rest with half an ear, but there was a source of irritation: _Oh, __so __we __don__'__t __count __as __the __New __World?__If __it __wasn__'__t __for __us __you __could __at __best __have __gotten __MAYBE __200,000 __men __off __Dunkirk __before __it __was __utterly __crushed, __then __again __maybe __those __documents __talking __about __caution __we __got __when __we __captured __Rundstedt __would __have __been __sent __and __the __Germans __would __have __moved __a __bit __slower, __so __let__'__s __revise __the __estimate __to __350,000 __or __so __men_.

Her next thought was this: _Let__'__s __show __the __guy __that __much __of __the __New __World __is __already __here __and __has __saved __one __and __a __half __million __soldiers __from __the __Nazis __for __you __to __wage __war __with._ The Germans had cut off the West Coast of France and the French Government was already negotiating an armistice. Fortunately, Hannah had successfully persuaded Daladier to start a government-in-exile for France in her holdings in Britain, namely, the Scilly Islands, with another significant French military figure, Charles De Gaulle, as his sidekick. The French GIE had formally been established on June the Fourth, 1940.

It managed to function after a fashion, and most of the French Navy was more willing to listen to it than to Paris, as Daladier's war prep policy had more support from the lower echelons of the military than with the civilians (hence why he was ousted before most of the order for V-F-1937Bs could arrive) and higher ranks. The French Navy elements that sided with the GIE (government-in-exile) were willing to subordinate themselves to British command as long as the French GIE did not issue contradicting orders to them. However, this subordination was scheduled to begin on July 1, despite a ceasefire and cooperation policy agreed on by Daladier and Churchill to be continuously applied before that.

The reason, as Daladier confided to Hannah, was the 2226 tons of gold being transported to Canada, South Africa, and other banks around the world (mostly to Canada) by the French Navy. It was to keep the national treasury from falling into German or British hands, though Daladier hurriedly told Hannah he would pay handsomely for her generous leasing of the Scilly Anchorage for the French Navy and the GIE facilities. Her response had been "It is entirely free, Mr. Daladier, you'll need the money to rebuild your homeland, keep it, we are paid enough by Canada to hold up business as is, and the convoy trade is doing well." Indeed, though there were still many convoys that used British escorts and such, they tended to try to tail the SI convoys or be near them if at all possible (even then it wasn't usually for long since the SI convoys outpaced them by seven to eight knots even running at 22 knots, economy speed). This was thanks to the free air support provided by the escort carriers and the powerful guns of the Destroyer and Frigates that sailed with each convoy. Shepard Industries was making a total killing by fees earned through cargo transfers, as any other shipping companies and even countries weren't willing to risk too much of their merchant cargo capacity to ship goods to England if it could be avoided. After all, it was much more expensive to replace a ship sunk by U-boat than to pay for even five runs of the cargo capacity on a fast, safe SI freighter.

Over 100 merchant ships had already been sunk by U-boats since the war started, and the worst damage an SI convoy across the Atlantic had sustained was six holed compartments (across the whole convoy) with a bit over a thousand tons cargo lost from the ruptured compartments. It was found that clothes packets or packed food tins were EXCELLENT at absorbing torpedo blast damage, perhaps because cooked meat and vegetables offered a lot of resistance to flying bits of hull RHA (for those torpedoes that got through the skirt damage absorption). Other merchantmen tried this too, but this turned out only to work well for ships designed with compartments capable of sealing and with damage absorption in mind. For those unfortunate merchantmen that ended up testing the theory first-hand it only meant it took longer for the ship to sink compared to normal torpedo hits. U-boats tended to avoid SI convoys so far, since there were still rich pickings available, after all, the SI convoys could only carry so much despite their 20,000-ton safe payload per ship and 25-ship convoys.

However, recent developments had much profited all sides by the "Escorts for Bases" agreement. It leased the services of 100 new, modern SI Corvettes and Frigates to the Royal Navy for the purchase of permanent base construction and usage rights on certain areas of British territory as well as the permanent purchase of other areas. The leased areas included Bermuda, the British West Indies, and all territories in the Indian Ocean plus others, while the purchased areas included the Scilly Islands, Gough Island and a few other remote, uninhabited islands that Hannah had chosen to permanently purchase for their strategic positioning. The ships leased were to serve the Royal Navy's directives for the duration of the war against Hitler, upon which they would be returned. Churchill had complained during the meeting that he was being gouged, but had acquiesced once he realized exactly how good the ships he was demanding were. They could outrun all current escorts by as much as double their speed (their maximum speed was well over 45 knots) and could run down subs, especially by torpedoing, before they could even really submerge. In terms of sensors, the Corvettes and Frigates could pick up submarine conning towers at night with their high-frequency radar sets and use their guns, be they the dual 100mm guns of the Corvette or the two triple 200mm gun turrets of the Frigates, for accurate fire at range. They could also direct aircraft flown off nearby airfields or carriers onto the target, and once the aircraft was in the area light said target up with their searchlights. When Churchill found out about the radar, developed by SI's massive R&D department, his words, "Oh, so THAT's why you aren't willing to just sell them to us and be done with it…" had been met with the response of "Of course, to stay successful I need to stay ahead of the game, develop your own, and THEN we can talk experience-sharing, who knows, you might come up with an alternative but viable method of doing things, and that will benefit all of us".

* * *

><p><em>Southern England, July 10, 1940<em>

Now, it was good that Jane had shipped a newer, better airplane, the V-F-1940A, for Hannah's aviators, since that meant their aircraft could now purely out-perform everyone else's, as the battles over Dunkirk had been more against bombers than fighters and the V-F-1938B was aging. Even though it was still more manoeuvrable and with better acceleration/deceleration characteristics than the RAF's Hawker Hurricane, it was only an even match for the newer models of Me109. Shepard Industries had brought in thousands of fully-trained fighter pilots to man the planes, which were "to support British operations but not be a part of them per se". They had after all been trained batch by batch over the past several years in Canada and no one in Canada or SI was willing to throw them away.

For example, the British could ask the Brigadier General in charge of an Aviation Brigade to launch an attack on, say, Brest. These Brigadiers were always men with over a year's training in basic to moderate ground manoeuvres, stealth and camouflage, and most importantly aviation doctrines, tactics, and actual flying, and had to be able to fly the aircraft their unit employed. Each Brigade was a powerful operational force when launching strikes. Fixed-deployment Brigades (at airports instead of on the road) supporting 480 aircraft or 40 squadrons in Air Force terms, but it would not be under direct control of the hiring party. The Brigadier could refute the requested strike if he could give a good strategic reason i.e. there was a minor hurricane over the airfield or the target, there were far too many Luftwaffe units attacking his airfield to ignore, or that his operational strength was too depleted. For example, if his (or her) operational strength dropped below one-half a typical mobile Aviation Brigade's aircraft count, i.e. below 160 planes, he could refuse any offensive missions against enemy territory and only take defensive ops. There were five Aviation Brigades, the Fourth through Eighth, forming the First Aviation Division, which, though subordinate to the SI command chain in wartime, formed an actual part of the Canadian Air Force and always would. That meant in peacetime the unit would not be SI-owned but instead belong to Canada, whereas the other units would remain SI-owned in peacetime and not just fight under the SI banner in war to avoid conscription by allied forces.

The units, stationed in the large plains between Nottingham and London, were sheltered from any possible invasion attempt's first attack while staying well within range of striking at the Continent and the French harbours that now held Hitler's forces. The French Navy had mostly come over to the Allies' side, which was good… they'd helped the security at Gibraltar and with convoys in the Atlantic, though the only end-to-end convoy escorts available were still SI vessels being hired out for the duty. Hannah only minded in that it might slow down the war effort, but from a purely business perspective it was an excellent situation. The part that was NOT excellent however was the newest reports from the British radar chain to the fighters she had based in Southern England, and the radio pings from Dowding about what she planned to do about the Channel battles, proposing a possible rotation of duties for their aircrews to get proper rest. Her response upon seeing the sort of numbers the Germans were using was "They're just probing us, I will ignore them for now, holding repeat holding my forces in reserve until enemy offensive grows bolder. Then we shall smash them over the head with a great hammer."

Dowding's response was "If you say so, but if you can't help here immediately, please tell me you can at least send a supply fleet to help Malta with their siege situation…"

Since the previous day, July 9, the British fleet had just beaten up the Italians at Calabria, it was a safe prospect even with the Italian battleships still intact (Carriers COULD in fact be sunk by battleships in a surprise attack) "No problem, Dowding, but they need aircraft the most of all, so if you could spare some of your Hurricanes, Spitfires and bombers then I can patch up the fighter deficiency well enough for you while still keeping Malta in our hands to strike at Axis shipping… damned Mussolini…" Hannah growled the last part.

"Alright, we'll be able to scrape something together, I'm sure, just have your ships ready, we need to get as much supplies to that island as we can so they can hold out in the face of the siege…" Dowding replied.

* * *

><p><em>England, August 14, 1940<em>

The shipment had gone off with 25 fully-loaded freighters and a standard escort group, leaving over a week after the talk. Hannah tracked their progress every step of the way, taking about one and a half days to reach Gibraltar at 35 knots, and another one and a half to reach Malta (British convoys took up to twice the time) with 480,000 tons of supplies and several hundred aircraft (hence why 20,000 tons of the capacity was not used up). They managed to make it relatively unmolested, as the Italian torpedo was inferior to the German one in power, not as accurate, and skirt armour caught the ones that came close except for one, which had blown a hole in the side of a Frigate. It listed s few degrees to port but thanks to its many watertight bulkheads and compartments plus sturdy construction, the hit did nothing more and continued on its way. It seemed the Italians had been aiming for the big ships mostly, so it wasn't impossible for the little ships to dodge the torpedoes, the big ones simply took it on their skirt armour if it couldn't be dodged. Doctrine held after all that if a shot could be dodged then dodge it, hell, skirt armour plates weren't even dropped into the water on their rails unless a hit seemed unavoidable…

Of course, Frigates and Corvettes lacked the skirt armour of Freighters, Destroyers and all Carriers. That was why the damage to the actual hull was serious enough to breach a compartment despite the 80mm thick RHA that made up the hull. The thickness rendered it effectively impervious to naval shells below about 120mm in calibre at anything above point-blank ranges and resistant even to larger-calibre armour-piercing slugs as holes could easily be patched. Well, that was as long as it wasn't an explosive round, which could be very serious, however, even snapping the ship in half would allow the tail portion to keep moving (if engines were working) and both to stay afloat thanks to the watertight lateral bulkheads (perpendicular to the ship's fore-aft axis), if it was a simple snap spanning only one or two of the inter-bulkhead spaces. They'd field-tested it and the stern portion had actually successfully towed the bow back to the shipyard for re-assembly. Then again, that had been a Corvette that had the system tested, they'd shot the unmanned Corvette with a 600mm torpedo that had buckled the ship in half, though fortunately forward of the engine room. It was almost as much of a facepalm for several naval engineers NOT employed by SI who were witnessing the tests as the test of the fast-attack boats' compartment system, but that is another story for another day, another officer…

The bad weather over southern Britain and much of northern France had finally begun to clear up, which was very, VERY bad as far as Hannah was concerned. As soon as the British high-level radar reported inbound German aircraft, in surgical strike forces, she knew that the time was coming for a showdown. The RAF was down to no more than 400 fighters plus a 300-plane reserve not to be deployed until the German invasion fleet entered the English Channel. Just First Aviation Division alone had 2400 active-duty airplanes scattered over 20 large airfields rolled out of British land between London and Nottingham. Being a fixed-deployment formation, the Brigades also had, instead of a mobile Aviation Brigade's 80 crate-packed aircraft, a standard of 160 aircraft crates per Brigade ready to replenish losses, as fighting over home turf meant the pilot loss rate would be much lower than that of aircraft. Her pilots were ordered to eat well and get good rest tonight, no more training exercises…

Most accursedly, the Germans seemed to actually figure out radar, as they dive-bombed radar stations despite RAF resistance, and also bombed the phone stations and power plants. Only after the war would it turn out that it was just a happy coincidence for the Germans, and that the Luftwaffe was actually afraid of powered-traverse heavy AA guns instead of the radar powered by the power plants. The sad result was that SI Frigates and Corvettes had to be anchored in "stealthy" positions to serve radar duty while the system's holes were being repaired.

As for the means of their stealth… well… "Are you serious?" Dowding asked incredulously as he looked at Hannah across the map table as if she'd grown another head. His subordinate Sector Commanders were doing the same thing. She had just spelled out a plan involving the use of her ships for a substitute radar chain until the main line could be brought back into action.

"Hiding in plain sight makes a lot of sense, the Germans don't have good enough radar to pick them up at those ranges and they're designed to minimize radar signatures, and the Germans would not expect us to park ships in the Channel nowadays. Also, given orders to hold fire until fired upon, and not under way, my ships will not leave a wake or AA fire to be seen from the air. Their diesel engines burn very clean," The things were composite turbine-piston in that the hot gas was used for turbine work as it was exhausted at high pressure, though this was mostly for the dynamo, and the main engine used large reciprocating pistons in an arrangement not unlike an automobile engine. The air-to-fuel ratio was very high, and had been established by calculations of chemical reactions of the fuel, not even counting the unavoidable water contamination of the fuel diesel, and hence the burn was _very_ clean. "So there is no smoke to speak of as they drift at anchor, believe me, it's the only chance you have right now." Hannah argued back.

"Well they're your ships… and the only real radar we have." The alternative was to deploy heavier RN ships in the Channel, which had been shot down almost instantly as an idea, or to go without radar, which was also instantly shot down. "I guess we could try it."

Hannah beamed at that "Excellent."

* * *

><p><em>England, August 15, 1940<em>

The day dawned crisp and clear, and that meant the radar picket ships were soon madly sending messages via hydrophone to the British subs of the Channel and the straits of Dover. These were in turn sending wireless signals to ground stations to be relayed to Fighter Command and Hannah Shepard, the system was somewhat tenuous, but had enough redundancy built in to work after a fashion. The RAF scrambled all squadrons in the sector as soon as reports of massive Luftwaffe formations came in from what was left of the Dowding Network and the ships in the Channel, and Shepard Industries mobilized Third and Fourth Aviation Brigades to ply the skies over southeast England. Over 1000 Allied fighters (though the SI aircraft were still mostly the old V-F-1938s with a few additions and modifications, making them technically 1938Cs) would soon be stacking up against almost equal numbers of attackers. Unfortunately, it seemed that some German elite units managed to sneak in under the radar coverage and bomb coastal airfields and depots, so the RAF fighters would have constraints on their choices of airfields, but that didn't matter for now as the initial collisions of fronts came, just inland from the British coastline.

The Germans were effectively swamped by the sheer number of fighters, most painted with the Maple Leaf with Bars logo incorporated into their camouflage patterns, screeching down from above and somewhat behind them out of the rising sun. The RAF forces managed to distract the Germans long enough for the hammer to fall, and the two hundred or so participating Hurricanes and Spitfires formed the anvil for nearly five times their number of attackers. The battles were scattered all along the coast and inland, so no single fight involved more than two hundred aircraft in a massive aerial brawl. The fighter-bomber configuration of the SI aircraft proved rather horrifically effective as their rear gunners fired on enemies that tried to tail them, though that was by no means easy thanks to the dive brakes being used independently for hard yawing to either side. They could turn even tighter than the Spitfire or Hurricane, and those could turn tighter than the Me109. Even though their guns weren't as impressive on paper, it was again proven that rate of fire and robust construction were what mattered as the Spitfires and Hurricanes used their eight forward guns to gun down over 70 German planes at a cost of only 26 of their own. Shepard Industries were using their numbers to crunch down on the Germans, nailing over 130 planes while losing 41 of their own, costing SI 17 aircrew members as most managed to parachute. After all the C model of the old V-F-1938 was modified to be controllable even with either or both the horizontal tail fins shot off, though manoeuvrability was… not as great, despite still having a turning circle inside that of the Me109.

The coordinated Luftwaffe attacks however had still managed to bomb quite a number of airfields while the fighters were occupied in their dogfights, in addition to strikes against radar stations, industry, and command centers. At least, that was the way it went in southeast Britain as Hannah was holding the rest of her Brigades on high alert, though not launching quite yet. This was perfect, as attackers were picked up coming from German holdings in Norway toward northeast Britain. It turned out to be two flights of German aircraft, the first raiding group, headed for northeast England, was 65 Heinkel 111s and 34 Me110s. RAF Great Driffield was apparently being targeted by 50 Junkers 88s with 30 Me110s. The Fifth Aviation Brigade was dispatched to intercept them and it was a total massacre as 240 fighters smashed down on EACH of the German forces. Only 35 German planes in total limped back to base, and 13 of those were irreparably mauled by the damage from the six forward-pointing 12.5mm guns of the fighters. Two of the 13 fell apart after barely managing to crash-land on their home airfields, and by that it meant they literally fell to pieces around the shocked aviators (one man was trapped for some time by his plane's roof caving in, while the other plane split lengthwise in a fashion not unlike the peeling of a banana).

The slaughter of aviators from both sides (more so the Germans, though they had larger reserves) continued for several more days until August 21, when bad weather rolled in over southern Britain and prevented further large-scale attacks. It gave aviators of the RAF and Luftwaffe alike some rest while the SI troops, of which no more than two Brigades on a given day (except the first day) were put up in the air, spent the days bored nearly shitless and only finding solace in training activities, reorganization, and discussion of further tactics based on experience. The break continued until August 24, when the low-level bomber infiltration attacks started up again and bombed a large number of factories in Birmingham, London and so long using low-level terror bombing tactics. The Luftwaffe had grown very scared of detection by radar, since it usually meant a gigantic hammer of planes bearing the Maple Leaf with Bars was inbound, so it had large detachments dedicated to bombing the radar towers over and over, since shipboard radar was now somewhat driven from the scene. The Germans had tried to bomb the ships, and only succeeded in crippling a Corvette and lightly damaging a Frigate before a new tactic was adopted. Upon the German aircraft closing enough to see their numbers or estimate their strength from the phosphor screen's dots, the ships would throw themselves into full gear and run away from the path of the German planes at a good 47-50 knots for a while before quickly halting outside the path of the German planes to avoid detection. Needless to say, these tactics worked best when there was a thin cover of clouds or it was near noon, or shadows would give away the positions of the ships. Factories were being bombed with increasing ferocity and aerodromes were being flattened one by one. The RAF was losing aircraft at a rate beyond what British factories could replace and the same was true of the pilots. The Canadian/SI units however… they were holding their ground staunchly against tides of German fighters swarming over the Channel to do battle.

However, the sweeping industrialization of Germany by the Nazis along with raw materials imported from the USSR was proving to be overwhelming, their fighter strength was staying reinforced and the battle of attrition, though horrific in its effect on both sides, was cushioned better on the German side. Britain had finally buckled and agreed to purchase fighters built in Canada instead of other choices, and although they were immediately shipped every fighter not counted in the Homeland Defence Inventory, which meant a few hundred V-F-1938Cs and some more old, not-yet-recycled V-F-1937Cs (fitted with the newer, better 1500-horsepower engine that the 1938s used as a stopgap measure for shipping to Britain, it was still better than the Hurricane in handling and such). V-F-1938Cs were also being passed off to British units as the SI units received shipment after shipment of V-F-1940As, but it wasn't enough with the newer Me109 variants popping up on the German side in growing numbers too and helping keep the score, though still lopsided, from becoming intolerable.

* * *

><p><em>Parliament, England, September 11, 1940<em>

By now the situation had grown extremely serious. The RAF was exhausted, with fewer than 300 fighters ready for duty, not counting the strategic reserve. This was as factories, trains and warehouses had been bombed so much that of the 800 planes that had started production since the Aerial Battle of Britain only 300 had made it to the airfields intact and losses were so high even the imports weren't keeping pace. The SI/Canadian forces had more or less maintained their operational strength near 95% despite towering losses (over 1200 planes were shot down and rather less than half that number of aircrew died), but the Germans were beginning to feel the depletion of experienced pilots. The Luftwaffe still had several thousand fighters despite their losses, and the threat was very real that they could beat down the RAF. However, the Germans chose this time to give up the massed air attacks in favour of rebuilding their strength, and it was to be this day when the Senate and the House were finally introduced to two of the finest military minds available. It was to be this day, September 11, 1940, that the tide of the Battle of Britain would turn once and for all, and one side of the two would spiral down toward defeat…

"May I introduce, General Hannah Shepard and Lieutenant General Gunter von Esling of Shepard Industries, please give them a warm welcome!" The Speaker was greeted with polite applause and a horde of shocked politicians as the elder co-founder/co-owner of Shepard Industries strode into the room with an aura of absolute confidence without arrogance and in full uniform. She was followed by the now 32-year-old Gunter von Esling, whose name had aroused gasps from the audience when it was announced.

Hannah stepped up to the pedestal and took the microphone "Greetings, members of the Parliament of Britain. We are very happy to cooperate with you in the defence of this island and its people…" She briefed the House of Commons and the House of Lords all at once, taking a couple hours to do it.

Later that day, things started going down as some of the more conservative and closed-minded members of the House of Lords, owning newspapers and radio stations, started blabbing Hannah's feminine status to the British public and the world. Their message was "How can we possibly trust a company founded by two WOMEN with a GERMAN as their number-one subordinate to provide us with an effective defence? Besides, our fighter strength has dropped by half since the battle for Britain's skies began and they have been fooling our citizens by painting their planes in our colour schemes." It had been something Churchill had persuaded Hannah to do so as to keep civilian morale up, to see the gigantic fighter formations of "Britain" duelling it out in the skies with German planes. "Who knows when they might try to destroy us from within by subversion and disguise? And what the hell are we doing letting a GERMAN deal with our homeland defence?"

The war censorship offices failed epically thanks to the influences of the politicians and within a week the rumour mill was out of control, although the radio stations and newspapers had been silenced from their anti-SI propaganda. Hannah was completely alarmed, as German attacks had dwindled to absolutely nothing except for an intensifying series of submarine attacks in packs just to let the PR debacle fester. Soon the papers were calling for Royal Navy escorts rather than depending on SI and thus putting Britain at the company's mercy. Much to Hannah's consternation Churchill secured a deal with the US to purchase 50 obsolete US destroyers as a PR move to help his support base in Britain. Unfortunately it would take months before any of them could be fully fitted with the sonar (asdic, they called it) needed to fight submarines, sonar which was inferior to the newest systems her scientists had devised. British convoy escorts typically did not exceed about six ships near the shore and on the high seas was typically only one armed merchant cruiser per convoy.

The SI arrangement was an attack squadron of eleven ships, two of them capital ships, which took a convoy the entire way across the sea at a steady but relatively good speed (more than fast enough to outrun U-boats on the surface by leaps and bounds). Britain had tried to mimic them by deploying all five of the Battlecruisers left over from the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow, modified to give enough range and firing the updated engines with oil instead of the old ones' coal, for escort duty. The result was that the _Von__Der__Tann_ and the _Derflinger_ (The British had been too lazy to rename them, merely nicknamed them "The Tan" and "The Flinger" respectively) had been sunk and the _Seydlitz_ (nicknamed "Said This") severely damaged by U-boat attacks. The British tried to imitate the Canadians' (well, SI's) skirt armour system, but it turned out to be too unstable to work optimally in high seas with long, narrow ships. No SI ship had a length-to-beam ratio exceeding about 6.5 or so, and most were around 5 to 6, it was a painful lesson for the British, who tended to build their capital ships between 7 to 8 in LTB ratio. The roll of the relatively tall British/German-designed ships was too dramatic for the system to be reliable in rough seas while SI ships were designed to be squatter from keel to the top of radio antennae than they were wide, hence even in heavy seas they tended to stay very stable.

Regardless of that, the result of the propaganda against a "bunch of militants led by a woman with a German for her top underdog" being put in charge of defending Britain was that Hannah and her troops were no longer always welcome. She was concerned about the Italian offensive in North Africa, and the Mediterranean situation. However, both seemed to be tipping slowly in favour of the British thanks to the Italian incompetence which she found, especially with the chiefs of staff and Mussolini's dictatorial tendencies, to be worse than even the USSR! There was also the fact that the Italians seemed to want to invade Greece soon, but that could only be good for the Allies as Greece did not currently provide much strategic value and would be able to tie up the incompetent Italians. She didn't offer a contract to the Greeks since their mountainous territory was at best unsuitable for her tanks to proceed in the sort of massed armoured warfare she usually employed. In other news, the Royal Navy's shipyards and capital ships had taken a horrible beating before the bombing had ended. The Luftwaffe had employed concentrated low-level bombing runs and torpedo-bombing units flying under the high-level radar and thus not giving enough time to vector large enough numbers of fighters to intercept.

The paranoia that was slowly spreading across Britain as the imminent threat of invasion seemed to fade slowly metastasized over the next several months. Britain's aircraft industry was slowly shifting over to bomber production as raids on Germany met less resistance than expected, which meant that the Luftwaffe's fighter strength was rather depleted. Hannah wasn't going to believe that for a second, the Germans had enough industrial capacity to crank out fighters and trained aviators like there was no tomorrow, having seized oil fields in Romania and getting oil imported from the USSR. Oil was after all essential to industry and training of soldiers, so the Germans could pull it off no problem…

By January 1940 even Churchill couldn't risk being seen too often talking to Hannah for the PR problem that she was not really trying to fix. Sure, she'd managed to calm things down in the Americas but she seemed to be indifferent toward the British opinion of her and her PMC. He had asked once by Churchill via telegram: "Why are you not trying to repair your reputation?"

The response was simple "It'll just make it worse, this will just simmer down with time, and the Germans have to do SOMETHING soon…"

* * *

><p><em>Iraq, January 19, 1941<em>

This had been an opportunity to get some faith back with the British people, so Hannah had taken it despite the contract being rather sketchy and only giving a moderate margin of profit. SI had sent two of its three Divisions to the job. Under Lieutenant General Gunter von Esling, First and Second Divisions were "cooperating" with the French GIE and British Commonwealth forces to invade Syria and Lebanon. Of course, everyone knew what that meant. It meant that a thundering herd of tanks and APCs swarmed over the border crushing everything in its path and was followed by allied units leisurely rolling along in trucks, only stopping every so often to secure prisoners.

There was only one problem: the fact that both areas were utterly squashed by two divisions of SI forces within three days of fighting, counting the levelling of forts, which were systematically annihilated by artillery and bombs, was alarming for the British people when sold in the right light. Hannah's plan had backfired completely, and her soldiers stayed where they were instead of coming back since there were now regular protests outside her camps, in addition to boycotting of the huge supply shipments her ships brought in. Those idiotic actions thanks to "national arrogance" as she termed it made the U-boat successes grow steeply, much worse than the Allies could hope to replace, to over 400,000 tons a month. Two of her four million tons of Atlantic shipping capacity were sitting at anchor with their escort groups on the Canadian East Coast while the others kept on running supplies all over the place in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. The British homeland might be stupid, but its territories were NOT, well, not all of them.

* * *

><p>Unbeknownst to anyone, the Germans weren't amassing transports for Operation Sea Lion. No, they were doing something much more insidious: They were modifying the transports in their home berths, though the boats were taken out of commission to do so. The Royal Navy was still quite under-strength, but the consistent barely-opposed bombing attacks on Germany were such a boost on British morale that they simply grew more disdainful of the organization that had saved their collective asses.<p>

By March 1941, Hannah Shepard was finished with putting up with Britain. She had given up on having rotten produce hurled at her forces whenever they passed through a hostile area of Britain. The island had polarized into two factions, one supporting her presence and one not. So, she decided to do the wise thing: Pull her troops out and send them to the only available ground theatre of war, North Africa, with Gunter in charge, while she herself went home to help get the new tank designs and such into full-scale production. She held a final private meeting with Churchill before leaving though, and during this she noted several aspects of the war that merited attention.

* * *

><p><em>Somewhere in Southern England, March 30, 1941<em>

"It's been a few agonizing months, Prime Minister." Hannah stated coolly. "I really appreciated your public support of my forces," that was bitingly sarcastic "but now it is time for me and mine to leave, my three divisions under the leadership of Gunter von Esling will be departing for North Africa shortly, to assist your forces there with their Erwin Rommel problem." Reports had not been good the past few days. "I need to get back to Canada so that we can get the industrial base to work harder and provide you with more raw materials. Of course, if you ever wish to purchase some tanks from us, give me a call." She finally gave the fat man a chance to talk then.

Churchill sighed woefully "You know I like cooperating with you, General, but…"

"I know and I understand, England cannot afford to be divided at such a time, we'll do what we can, ship you some of our goods at reduced prices, continue providing the freight transfer service, and keep a full garrison of fighter craft at Scilly. I pray they are never needed though."

"So do I, General Shepard, so do I…" Churchill nodded, his extra chins shaking a bit, before asking "Is there anything else that you want to tell me, anything useful?"

"Be careful about Ireland. It's not heavily fortified, has lots of flat tank terrain, and right now the Royal Navy's light ships are depleted enough that Germany just might be able to mount an invasion there to outflank Britain. It's one of the reasons I built the Scilly Anchorage and the air bases there, and have parked multiple Aviation Brigades there." Hannah told Churchill as she brought out a strategic map of the British Isles "Also, consider setting up some more railways in Scotland and some more harbours that merchantmen can reach by convoy, I know that German U-boats are mostly based in France these days, so the area's a lot safer. It'll still be dangerous, but enough escorts will mean that the area could become critical to supplying Britain if, as I said, Germany somehow manages to invade Ireland."

"Thank you for this strategic briefing, General, can you provide Greece with any support while you are in the Mediterranean?" SI ships were allowed to use the British harbours there freely, though most often they tended to overnight on one of the ports Spain had built on Minorca's east coast. After all, warships were allowed to stay in neutral harbours for up to 72 hours without being interned, and they circumvented this restriction by sailing out every three days and then coming back about an hour later, starting the countdown all over again.

"No, the terrain of Greece is unsuitable for armoured warfare on the scale I prefer to use and limits manoeuvring into highly hazardous kill-zones. I don't have the sort of manpower needed to fight a long-term mountain campaign, and it will inevitably fall to Germany, the most harm I can do to the Axis war effort will be in North Africa, where you are being pushed back mercilessly by the German Afrika Korps." Hannah stated bluntly.

"I understand, General, and I'll do what I can to turn public opinion back into the unified front it was. We will gladly welcome you back anytime, though ideally after I've remedied the PR problem…"

"Alright, Mr. Churchill, I must leave now, good luck. We won't be seeing each other for at least another two and a half years." Hannah shook the man's hand before leaving while Churchill left the room through another door. Walking out, Hannah looked toward the sky and sighed "God helps those who help themselves. Britain, you would do well to remember that."

Churchill, on the other side of the building, was shaking his head and chewing on his bottom lip, holding in tears "What has those imbeciles in the House of Lords done?" They had forced a treaty on Shepard Industries that swore the ground forces of said PMC would not land on the island of Britain for more than two days at a time for the next two and a half years starting May 1 of 1941. Churchill had been forced to comply by the popular support for the foolish cause, but he had a feeling it was the worst choice he could have been forced to make and had the Lords do the signing instead of doing it himself. If this thing backfired, and he believed it would, then the blame would fall on the old idiots and he could boot them out of the House of Lords with impunity, then give the House some new blood for once.

* * *

><p><em>Halifax, Canada, April 7, 1941<em>

Hannah stepped off the ship to board a car that was waiting for her, to take her to the train station while she was reading the documents and reports that had been packed for her. The progress on the next tank design was going swimmingly and they had the four-track transmission at least functional with Christie suspension running toward the equatorial plane of the vehicle (the front track pods had suspension pointing backward and the back ones were pointing, well, forward). Supposedly the plan was for the A variant to be a standard tank while the B variant was self-propelled artillery mounting the 100mm howitzer in tank style. The A-WTC-95-60A was also nearly complete, undergoing field testing including throwing buckets of water over the gun and then firing it. It would be the standard armament of the A variant if all went according to plan, however, the gun-sights were still a bit of a question mark. Jane also wanted to discuss possibilities for a new type of armour based on her observations of how different materials took damage.

Within several hours she was on a secure phone line with her sister, who was currently coordinating the shipyard industry in British Columbia and dealing with contracts with the US Navy for ferrying US fighter craft to the Pacific bases. Sure, the carriers came back empty of planes except for the ones in crate form, but their 200mm guns, sonar, torpedoes and depth charges should be able to hold off raiders for long enough to run away, right? Okay, so maybe the main protection was speed, as the carriers could do long, straight runs of 45 knots when not loaded with aviation supplies, but that was beside the point.

"What is this new armour concept you've thought of?"

"Well I put a hammer to a ceramic plate, don't ask when or why, and it shattered, but the hammer couldn't pulverise the fragments enough to penetrate, so I was thinking that sandwiching ceramic plates between the RHA layers could be very useful… and they can absorb shocks from high explosive type rounds too by pulverization." Jane responded.

Hannah's eyebrows shot up in interest "Have you begun trials yet?"

"Well we have several dozen chemists analysing what makes a good, firm ceramic plate with minimal shattering properties, but I don't expect the project to bear fruit too soon." Jane stated. "By the way, Mom and Dad brought some good stuff from their trip to Japan, go and talk to them."

"Understood, sis, how's life been?"

"Great, business is fine except for the PR debacle with the British, but I hear you sent Gunter to deal with the North Africa situation…"

"Yeah, and he's done fairly well so far, good thing we designed our things with such huge and efficient water storage tanks, eh?" Hannah took a moment to gloat before coming back to reality. "Regardless, Gunter has been delayed for longer than expected, but he should have engaged Rommel's forces yesterday."

* * *

><p><em>Libya-Egypt Border, April 11, 1941<em>

Lieutenant General Gunter von Esling looked at his situational map rather glumly. The Germans had more fighters and recon planes than expected, and so they maintained recon deep into the desert in the south in addition to an elastic defence line also stretching into the desert. He'd lost a couple tanks and APCs the previous day at a 50-to-1 vehicular loss ratio against Italian "tanks". The vehicles he'd "lost" were merely disabled by mines or shells breaking tracks and were repaired simply by fixing the tracks, as the plastic-rimmed road wheels that reduced track wear (plastic being more wear-resistant than rubber) weren't very good for driving. The Italians did not have tanks practically worthy of the term in his opinion. However, he was rather stuck as the Germans had apparently learnt to bring many more Flak-88s and it had cost him some dozen or so tanks against well-fortified anti-tank gun positions before he called a retreat and life became an artillery and aircraft duel. A major thrust could break through, but it would cost a large number of tanks… numbers that he didn't want to lose. With Third Division and First Aviation Division joining him he had a bit over 2200 tanks at his disposal, which were quite superior to German ones, but Gunter knew that the Germans could muster greater numbers of the newly up-gunned Panzer IVs and Panthers (Panzer 5) to fight him with. Although his tanks could still cut through their armour within one or two shots, the Germans were actually a threat with their 75mm 70-calibre-barrelled guns being even longer than his own vehicles' guns, roughly balancing their power. He couldn't afford to let the Africa Corps (Gunter thought in German AND English) stand for long though, in case the Germans brought something even better… what to do, what to do?

There was one bright point in all this depression: The British were retreating from Greece and so he could afford to no longer babysit their line in Egypt. Malta was holding easily with the huge supply shipment they had received last year being supplemented by new supply shipments, and his own fleet could run cargo interdiction against the Axis units as well as night-time anti-airfield raids every so often against Sicily. Hannah had assigned three Light Carriers, each loading 60 V-F-1940A aircraft, to his command in addition to their respective escort groups of Frigates and Corvettes, adding up to respectable mobile forces in addition to his freighters and escort groups. He had enough naval strength to challenge the Italian fleet directly for naval supremacy, and Gunter von Esling prepared to do just that while he let Rommel grow more complacent and/or paranoid on the stalemated line.

His main fleet, designated the Second Carrier Strike Force (the First CSF was the Pacific Fleet) for this mission, was currently supposedly berthed at Gibraltar. The formation was dominated by the _Saskatchewan_, the _Alberta_, and the _Prince __Edward __Island_, half of SI's Light Carrier force, the half which was in the Atlantic right now. The three Medium Carriers, the _Ontario_, _Quebec_ and _British __Columbia_, were in Vancouver, and with the other three Light Carriers formed the bulk of the Pacific Fleet that was being built up around them in the form of Destroyers, Frigates and Corvettes. The smaller construction projects were using the slips the carriers had once been berthed in and had been birthed from, maintaining the employment level of the region and her firm political support there. Every so often another ship would be launched to be fitted, and once it was formally commissioned the workers would go back to building another hull on the slips.

The formation was in fact moving toward the West Coast of Spain to launch massed attacks on the harbours there, based on recon data, and bomb industrial areas too. The attack would be a ferocious one, he had after all ordered the spotting of aircraft onboard to increase the carrying capacity to 72 planes per Light Carrier. 12 from each carrier would be dedicated to holding air-space over the fleet in case of enemy bomber attack (the Luftwaffe was now mainly operating in the Mediterranean) while 60 would be sent to each of the three main ports he was hitting. Of those strike forces, 24 each would be air-superiority fighter configurations. Those would cover 12 torpedo-bombers with one N-WT-450-1000A torpedo each, 12 dive-bomber configurations equipped with pairs of V-WBP-400B and 5 V-WBA-40A bombs, and 12 level-bombers fitted with 25 V-WBA-40A bombs each. The 400kg armour-piercing bomb had proved rather successful for attacks on hardened targets or ships, the second model was expected to do even better at penetrating armour or concrete, and the 40kg all-purpose bomb was very popular among pilots for attacking softer targets such as enemy columns or factory districts.

The entire fleet was on high alert as they entered the area enclosed by Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the Italian Peninsula under cover of darkness on the night of April 11/12, running silent and dark. Quarters of oil barrels used to cover the carrier deck lights (stealth) allowed the pilots to take off in total darkness, only their tail and wing lights allowing them to form up in separate circling formations before flying off into the night, led by their compasses and radio bearings from the fleet.

Two of the strike forces were headed for Genoa and Spezia near the north of Italy while the third was destined for Naples. The former two launched a full hour before the last as their targets were just so much further away. By 0400 hours the last planes vanished into the night, swallowed up by the horizon as the fleet moved in an Individual Circle 500 pattern to starboard to stay in the same general area. That meant every ship was drawing a circle 500 meters in radius, constantly turning starboard, an easy task for the large, efficient rudders of all SI ships, especially the Carriers which were fitted with enough rudders and were stable enough for a turn in under 600 meters _diameter_ to work out fine. They couldn't exactly cast anchor because the water was too deep but they could stay in the area by moving and constantly checking the radar feeds, plus it helped mobility in case of submarine attack.

Between 0445 and 0450 the first radio transmissions were received from the fliers: "Attack Squadron PEI on target", "Attack Squadron Saskatchewan on target" and "Attack Squadron Alberta on target" The messages had come within minutes of each other and the unified order to attack was given in the form of "Operation is a Go, repeat, operation is a Go." The plan was that even if nothing came from the fleet, the flights would have attacked 15 minutes after identifying their target from night-time photos obtained from the British. However, the order to attack greatly improved synchronization and resulted in pillars of fire and flames rising up along the Italian coast at nearly the same time as oil tank farms were bombed along with anything that looked like a warehouse in the ports.

Torpedo-bombers mostly made low-level runs in the harbours, a handful dive-bombed with their torpedoes at targets where cranes were too dense for low runs. Of a grand total of 36 torpedoes dropped only 5 missed (4 from dive-bombing attempts), though it was notable that one torpedo tossed by a dive-bombing plane managed to punch down through the fire-control systems of a battleship and disable all coordination of the crew scrambling to AAA positions in addition to tearing a hole in the bottom and keel of the ship. The level bombers laid down neat lines of bombs on their targets, vulnerable factory complexes identified by smokestacks and their accompanying warehouses. Secondary targets for these bombers were the cranes of the harbours, which were hardly a problem with the combination of an excellent bomb sight (recruiting an army of scientists was very useful), low-level flying and strings of five bombs in a row whenever the need was felt. The dive-bombers were blasting anything that seemed armoured and/or military, such as tankers, hangars, dry-docks, ships, and so on. The raids only lasted twenty minutes—during which seven aircraft were damaged by light AA fire but none lost, the Italians did not even get one fighter into the air intact—and left the Italian fleet a blazing shambles burning in the night. Thanks to all the aircraft having direction-finding radio receivers, all 144 attacking aircraft returned safely, the last stragglers making it one and a half hours after the attack ended as the fleet was sailing toward the passage between Sicily and Sardinia.

Well, not all of them made it safely per se, since two of the aircraft were too damaged to fly again and were salvaged for parts and scrap metal. Still, it was a low price to pay for effectively castrating Italy's capital ship strength down to a few light cruisers and a handful of destroyers that the British navy could defeat at will. That was unless the Germans brought their Stukas back, since those had been pulled out for the German invasion of Greece, allowing the SI strike to smash Italy's fleet without trouble.

Air Commodore Hugh Lloyd, who had just been given the hot potato of taking care of Malta, sent a letter to Gunter two days later once his recon planes had ascertained just what they were seeing. It read:

To Shepard Industries European Theatre Commander Gunter von Esling,

Although your parents may have been German, if asked correctly, I have a feeling that I may take to worshipping the ground you walk on, Lieutenant General, you have done more for Malta than anyone else has, thank you, not only for the attack of the Italian fleet but also for your regular shipments of supplies. Though we may be bombed each day I know now that the Italians have no hope of launching a successful invasion, merely lay siege to us, we will endure this siege, and we will have your back in any offensive in North Africa, sir, we will have your back. We owe you.

Air Commodore Hugh Lloyd

Malta's Air Officer Commanding

* * *

><p><em>Libya-Egypt Border, April 21, 1941<em>

Gunter chuckled morbidly as he read the message from Malta that had come with the last mail packet. He'd just given orders to his men yesterday about Operation Battleaxe, which was to be a left hook to Rommel. Well, he hadn't given orders about the op per se, merely that First and Second Divisions were to immediately renew their water supply. That was done by pumping it all to the British troops, who welcomed the chance to bathe, washing out the water tanks, and then filling them up with freshly obtained water from the wells of Alexandria, boiled to sterilize before being put in the storage tanks. Men also loaded up on large amounts of fuel and ammunition as preparation for an offensive.

The plan was announced to the Brigadiers while the men were busy "We are going to go south, one hundred and fifty kilometres south, then head west another fifty, and finally head north to the coast and smash everything Rommel puts in our way." No one argued, as they could all see the plan was reasonable given the range of their vehicles and how they could refuel while moving from spare fuel canisters.

Unfortunately, there was only one unforeseen problem with the plan. Rommel did not have a corps. What von Esling's First and Second Divisions' 1400 tanks and even more APCs, followed by trucks, thundered into was instead a full German Army Group, much better mechanized and equipped than those deployed during the Battle of France. Rommel was in command, and his Flak-88s managed to leave over 100 burning hulks to add to the fifty tanks and APCs destroyed by the Panzer IVs and Panthers, which in turn were pounded vociferously into the ground by massive barrages of 75mm shells against their relatively flimsy armour. Still, the Germans were beaten all the way back to Tobruk in the operation, and the British rushed to overwhelm the preoccupied German forces in a hurried offensive. Wavell hadn't really been that confident in Gunter's ability to beat up his "countrymen", but he'd agreed to pay the PMC a hefty bonus if the siege on Tobruk could be lifted and Rommel hurled back to the Gazala Line. Von Esling himself thought it wise to stop there at least for now to let Maltese units batter the Germans into submission by cutting their logistics. His men had been at DEFCON 3 for long enough as was and they needed some rest… i.e. stepping things down to DEFCON 4.

The Shepard Industries Defence Condition system had been created after a conference with MacArthur and private conversation, or the log thereof, by Neil Shepard planted the idea in Jane's head. It went from DEFCON 5 to 1, with DEFCON 5 for peacetime status and readiness. DEFCON 4 indicated that all personnel were to report to ready stations and be ready to engage in combat within 6 hours. DEFCON 3 authorized conventional warfare in the form of land, naval and/or air engagements with the enemy. DEFCON 2 authorized the use of Strategic Bombing Doctrine, Scorched Earth Doctrine, Unlimited Blockade Doctrine (so named as SI had yet to decide to field subs), and so on. DEFCON 1 was reserved for the authorization of strategic-level usage of Absolute Bombing Doctrine, or any usage of Chemical Warfare Doctrine or Biological Warfare Doctrine. It was expected that as more powerful technologies became available DEFCON 2 and 1 would become more powerful, but that was for the future. The SI military had been at DEFCON 3 on and off for a long time, and Gunter believed it was time to give them some proper rest. Hannah had okayed the idea, but warned him not to let Rommel catch him by surprise and to pull the forces back from the front if he was going to give them a break.

* * *

><p>AN: How ugly the truth, even about such beautiful people, can get with the proper propaganda to the sheep of the world… The House of Lords effectively neutered itself as an influential entity according to later historians by this move.

REVIEW!


	14. We Fought On the Beaches

A/N: Someone pointed out this reads as dry as a history archive. Then I finally realized this was supposed to be one, hence I changed the title and description of the fic to fit.

Let's look at it this way: Would you rather read a historical archive style fiction piece with hours of research put into every chapter or something like a Moemon story? I know this has no real plot, like Moemon stories which are essentially plot-less, but at least it's not pointless, right? I mean, I like working with a familiar cast of characters and see how differently they would turn out under different circumstances, hence the old crew that the Multi-verse takes great pleasure in passing through the grinder over and over again will come around eventually… and THEN it will be a STORY! Of course, real storytelling begins with the genetically engineered successor Yuri created (whereas he was Prime, he designated his successor Zero), or as Hannah chose to name the baby she found in the wreckage of the Antarctica Base in this cycle, Yuriko, with the code Omega attached to the end by the Japanese after her kidnapping. Since the Japanese only employ clones of her anyways, I'm planning on something fun for her story. But that will have to wait until the end of the Psychic Dominator Disaster, before that it'll be mostly reading like a history archive.

To Nenfaer, what is this Eastern Front you speak of? As for the 100mm howitzer being the current sole artillery piece, it will be explained. Nuclear tech comes later in this timeline, and the ceramic isn't as good quality as in our modern tanks, but it still works better than steel (pulverization absorbs a LOT of energy, and ceramic won't bend/distort unlike steel). The reverse-engineering of 88s is another issue altogether.

* * *

><p>Chapter 14: We Fought On the Beaches<p>

_North Atlantic, May 20, 1941_

An SI Convoy which had been warned of the three inbound raiders, the _Bismarck_, _Tirpitz_ and _Prinz__Eugen_, steamed on westward on their return trip from Britain at 25 knots, their economy speed when not loaded down with cargo. They were, unintentionally, headed head-first toward the two best battleships of the Germans supported by a heavy cruiser. The Escort Carrier of the group picked up the enemy first, spotting them some 100 kilometres from the fleet with recon aircraft sent out according to Anti-Raider Convoy Doctrine. The radio signal upon identification of the great warships prompted the whole convoy of SI ships to do an immediate 90-degree-turn to port under orders and shift speed to 40 knots (the Destroyer let off some ballast water to do this). It also was the signal for virtually every plane available on the EC, other than the recon screen and a handful of fighter-ASW craft kept on hand, to be scrambled with bombs or torpedoes and launched. Within ten minutes in a series of emergency launches the thirty available craft (6 ASW reserve, 12 had been scouting but were now being recalled) were on their way. The dive-bombers, fitted with two 400kg bombs each, had gone up first because they needed to claw for height while the torpedo-bombers could fly essentially skimming the sea at masthead level. There were 17 of the former and 13 of the latter that made their way toward the enemy force that was barrelling east after eliminating two of the four British battleships they had engaged, namely the _Hood_ and the _Rodney_. The _Prince __of __Wales_ and the _King __George __V_ had escaped with moderate damage, and the _Ark __Royal_'s Swordfish torpedo-bombers had failed to inflict real damage on any of the warships, merely blowing enough of a hole in the bow of the _Bismarck_ that it trailed an oil slick. The German ships seemed to be heading to the west coast of France (i.e. Brest) now, so the convoy had to get out of the way fast if they didn't want to be caught under the battleships' 15-inch guns.

The aircraft reached the expected target area and fanned out before one of the dive-bomber gunners sighted the targets through the floor window of the plane. "All pilots, this is A-3 of the _Halifax_, have sighted three capital ships, target bearing 100" That meant 10 degrees south of due east, then he reported his coordinates "Form up on me and await confirmation." He hit the switch for the signal strength booster "Halifax A-3 to _Halifax_" Escort Carriers were named after provincial capitals while Destroyers were named after major cities in Canada, or at least that was the system so far. "Target appears to be three battleships or two with a heavy cruiser. Are there any other capital ships around?"

"Negative Halifax A-3, no other capital ships around, permission to engage granted, repeat, permission to engage granted."

"Affirmative, _Halifax_." A-1, the squadron commander (the 30 planes currently in the air were A-1 through A-12, B-1 through B-12 and C-1 through C-6 by squadron designation) replied, cutting into the conversation as was routine "This is Halifax A-1, form up on A-3, we strike in about five minutes, on my mark. Repeat, we strike on my mark." The planes wheeled in the air as they gathered above the Germans, the torpedo-planes somewhat southward of their dive-bomber compatriots and much closer to sea level. Within the next three minutes stragglers came in and the thirty aircraft went to the attack in unison as A-1 called "MARK!"

The torpedo bombers glided lower toward the surface of the sea until they were flying mere thirty or forty metres above the water as the dive-bombers pushed their noses over to begin their 75-degree dives on their targets. All of the diving planes opened dive flaps, for although SI aircraft always employed sturdy construction they still did have a red line speed, at something like 900km/h, where the planes could no longer withstand the stress of flight. Both groups of aircraft had followed doctrine in gathering at appropriate distances so that the dive bombers and torpedo bombers came at their targets at the same time.

The warships below began to throw up a tremendous screen of flak fire, even using their main guns in fire-for-effect volleys at the low-flying torpedo bombers. A few were damaged and one shot down, but in return they fed five torpedoes into the _Prinz __Eugen_ and two into the _Tirpitz_, as well as another torpedo which jammed the Bismarck's port-side rudder at 15 degrees inboard (i.e. the ship would constantly try to turn starboard or, at the moment, northward). Eight had hit out of twelve torpedoes dropped at 800 meters, standard attack range, representing a very respectable gunnery record.

Unfortunately the _Tirpitz_ had taken the hits directly to its armour belt and the explosions had failed to penetrate. The dive-bombers' work, especially on the _Bismarck_, had epic-failed when the jammed rudder made the ship swerve out of the way when otherwise it would have failed to do so with the fact that the crew was more focused on trying to dodge torpedoes than adopting a proper evasion pattern against dive-bombers, which meant erratic manoeuvring as opposed to circling or figure-8 patterns against torpedoes. Only two bombs of the 18 lobbed at the _Bismarck_ hit, far less than the usual 60%-plus gunnery record of the aircraft even against wildly evasive targets, and they only managed to destroy a secondary gun turret and make a crater in the forward deck.

The _Prinz __Eugen_ was already starting to list, now dead in the water, when 13 bombs out of 14 lobbed at it hit it and set off all its main magazines at once. Almost comically, the ensuing explosions would account for a third of the aviators killed in the attack and a quarter of the aircraft lost by one of the turrets flying into the air on a pillar of fire and smashing a V-F-1940 pulling out of its dive into a metal and meat pancake. Two other aircraft were damaged and one was shot down by the _Tirpitz_, while the _Bismarck_ claimed one more torpedo-bomber damaged, having nailed one dead on its run in. Six aircrew died in the battle from the four destroyed planes, as the one damaged plane that flew drunkenly back to the carrier basically crash-landed on the RHA flight deck and had to be salvaged for parts and scrap metal after the fire was extinguished. Only the fact that it wasn't carrying any large ammunition allowed the horribly mauled plane to land and be salvaged, otherwise the aviators would have been ordered to bail out and the plane allowed to crash into the sea. After all, damaged aircraft carrying ammunition were too dangerous to allow landing despite the planes being able to, by virtue of durable design, land safely with ammunition intact when undamaged. That was the fourth aircraft lost in the expedition, but they had sunk a German capital ship and the convoy was rapidly outrunning the Germans, so they were well and safe. Another strike was planned right away with the ambitious goal of sinking the two battleships of the Kriegsmarine, but the planes would fail to find their targets. They had failed to notice the _Bismarck_'s jammed rudder and had assumed the Germans had just hauled to starboard, interrupting their original evasive pattern, to dodge bombs.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile on the <em>Bismarck<em>, which was trying to fix the rudders while the _Tirpitz_ was busy picking up survivors from the now sunk _Prinz __Eugen_, a sense of desperation was palpable. The great warship was slowly making circles as steering via propellers was attempted, until finally a bridge officer, Schneider, the First Gunnery Officer, just threw up his hands and exclaimed "Why the flying fuck don't we just turn the other rudder the other way at the same angle?"

Everyone on the bridge, including Captain Lindemann and Admiral Lütjens, turned to stare at the man for a brief moment before the captain stated "That was a very good idea, it is, barely, within the rudders' turning capacity after all."

Lütjens' response was somewhat different "If this works, you are going to get a medal and a huge pay bonus even if I have to pay you myself, Schneider." And so it was done, and by the next morning, the _Tirpitz_ and _Bismarck_ were sailing in company into the harbour of Brest, where both were immediately put in for repairs. The message that Lütjens had written, reading "Ship un-manoeuvrable. We will fight to the last shell. Long live the Fuhrer." was never sent. Needless to say, Schneider was given a month of leave, a medal and a large pay bonus by the Admiral.

* * *

><p><em>Libya-Egypt Border, June 18, 1941<em>

The Shepard Industries Army had taken three ten-day rest and relaxation periods with twenty days of low-intensity high-difficulty training in between, also chopped up into two ten-day periods. Right now, their operational strength was back up to the full 60000 members, with the severely injured or disabled shipped back to Canada and traded for reserve units to fill up the formations again. That was why there was a second training period, to let the newcomers integrate well into the existing units, with the ten days of R&R before and after the training to let them familiarize themselves with their fellows in a non-combat scenario.

There was only one problem, in May, the British had come under massive attacks and Rommel had forced them to fight pitched armoured battles in the area known as the Devil's Cauldron, with newly up-armoured Panzer IVs using armour as thick as SI T-1936 tanks used, 80mm, though due to lack of sloping it was far less effective.

Testing with the Flak-88s that had been captured in the earlier offensives gave some alarming news. The PaK-43 could penetrate the T-1936 easily with the newer ammunition types, i.e. everything except high explosive, though it needed to be within 1200 meters to do so. However, thanks to the engine block being at the front and the sheer sturdiness of construction the shell usually could not tear into the fighting compartment unless the range was under 600 meters. The SI tanks had good enough optical rangefinders and training that they could accurately eliminate an exposed gun at even 1500m range within two shots. As for the PaK-36, which had a shorter barrel, the usual penetration to front armour needed either a better angle than level firing or ranges around 500m with the best ammunition. Though their armour was far superior, the guns told a different story, for the SI vehicles had nowhere near the 88's gunnery power, unless 100mm howitzers being used for anti-tank duty counted. However there were a few problems with that. Howitzers didn't have as much muzzle velocity (the somewhat lower barrel pressure compared to typical tank guns made the barrel life far longer) and so were not as accurate against moving targets, but most importantly, the things traded in weight for price tag. Sure, captured 88s were also used, but they were more irritating in supply than the 100mm guns (these shared shells with SI Corvettes) and didn't have the sort of range in artillery work. The news from Hannah said that the next tank gun would include some features from the 88, but be even better, and Gunter believed his General.

However, the new German tanks getting to the front were also getting better, and according to reports a new heavy tank had been showing up… the Panzer 6 "Tiger" tank. That was highly worrying as the British were being pushed back. Von Esling reorganized his forces immediately and began moving toward the front, flying his aircraft off for ground support duty loaded out with bombs. Gunter had vast numerical superiority and slight qualitative superiority in the air, with three Mobile Aviation Brigades and a fixed-deployment type Aviation Division, which meant 960 plus 2400 equals 3360 available planes to rain down bombs with. However, the Luftwaffe presence in the area was almost as large and was dominated by masses of Me109Fs that, though not quite as good, were still able to stack against his V-F-1940As when the latter were carrying bombs. Hence he always had to dedicate some to air superiority even with dividing his forces into 7 sections of 480 planes each to fly continuous bombing attacks against the Germans, with 180 of each strike force dedicated to fighter escort duty and the rest fitted with 40kg all-purpose bombs. The Germans had something like 1500 fighters to resist with, but the continuous attacks kept them from fielding too many at once. The Germans also had far superior tank counts to throw against him, and Gunter was hoping that the new tank design Hannah mentioned would arrive soon, or he'd be in a rut. Malta had not been nearly as effective as had been hoped and only SI convoys were keeping it fed and fuelled. The Axis convoys were getting by, and Rommel was hitting harder with every passing day. General Alexander, the current CINC Middle East, were very concerned as their armoured divisions were being smashed and told Gunter so.

Two days later, Von Esling began to share their concerns as his armour was being pushed back by the German Tiger tanks. For both sides, shooting at one another at long range was roughly equivalent in effect to making rude hand gestures (if you were lucky the other guy would drop a round on his foot from irritation and cook off his tank by accident or something) and only announced one's position. Therefore every tanker on the battlefield was jockeying for a good flank shot as the KwK-36, which was the same as the PaK-36, was incapable of penetrating the 80mm plating slanted at 30 degrees from horizontal at more than point-blank. Hell, it even had a hard time at more than point-blank range with the sloping portions of the side plates, which were at 45 degrees! The Tiger tanks had to aim low if it wanted to get a kill, to get the very small un-sloped part of the hull not shielded by track skirt armour. Thanks to lack of sloping, the 75mm long-barrelled high-velocity gun of the T-1936 could penetrate the side of its much heavier adversary at point-blank. This was impressive considering the Tiger had originally been designed to fight the T-1936 evenly after the debacles of the Spanish Civil War. The observed successfulness of the Flak-88 against SI T-1936s using armour-piercing ammunition and with a good firing angle (depressed and thus hitting the plating at an angle it was not made to take from such a powerful gun, or hitting it multiple times to wreck the armour's resilience) had made it the obvious gun choice.

The final tally of one minor skirmish was ten T-1936s disabled and five totally destroyed for four Tigers disabled or destroyed, a very unfavourable ratio for a Private Military Company but an astonishingly good ratio according to SI's British allies. Then both sides broke off the engagement by backing their tanks away from each other and trying to disable each other with long range fire. The SI crews were aiming for the tracks as they couldn't puncture the glacis plate, but the tracks were exposed on the Tigers. The Germans were trying the same to relatively little effect as a shell that glanced off the horizontal top of the track-screen armour (the T-1936 had this on the front part of their tracks too while the Tiger did not) was unlikely to leave more than a deep gouge and/or a scorch mark. However, neither side succeeded at disabling any vehicles, and the engagement trailed off with both sides running off, the Tigers because of inbound SI air support visible on the horizon (they wanted to get under AAA coverage ASAP), and the SI tanks to conserve strength. Gunter was again reminded of the fact that although both sides were making hugely destructive swings at each other, with the British Army being a bit of a meat shield for SI before the PMC struck back, that he needed a better tank, or, failing that, a better anti-tank gun solution. His current one involved using his howitzers' superior range and long-ranged kill power using HEAT rounds against Tiger tanks, which was reliable but in his opinion rather awkward as it deprived him of actual artillery support. Also, the guns were rather costly thanks to all the weight-reducing and recoil-dampening gear that went into them. He needed a cheaper anti-tank gun that could be mass-produced, and was ideally larger and rather tougher than the 88.

Henry Mohaupt, the Swiss inventor of the HEAT concept, had been hired on long-term contract with a very good pay rate and few budget constrictions, as well as an overseer i.e. Jane Shepard willing to listen and able to understand. It was practically any scientist or inventor's dream, so even a better-paying offer form the US was declined by the man in favour of working in a friendlier environment. Jane did get him a good consulting contract though with the US for occasional consultation projects regarding their own shaped-charge warhead developments. That was why he was very thankful and loyal to SI, considering it allowed him to get higher total pay than working for either side alone, experience more things, and was less mired in lab politics, etc. Jane and Hannah, both being slightly "nerdy" did their best to make it a nerd's wet dream, not that either of them had ever actually had any such pointless fantasies (Jade was very concerned for her daughters after they told her of this). The man had worked so hard that his refined copper cone and explosive design was now able to penetrate RHA at thicknesses up to 200% of the round diameter. Then there was the problem of the rifled barrel making the round spin and reducing penetration, but rifling was useful for accuracy of any other round type and they'd decided to get around the problem by using a thin ball-bearing sabot-style separator design that allowed the round to mostly not spin, though this meant accuracy for engagements over 2 km was not as good as it could have been.

Gunter was REALLY concerned about the new German tanks, since they were actually able to outfight his own tanks. However, Hannah did promise new ammunition types before Christmas, so Gunter wasn't desperate yet. Regardless, Malta was still a problem. It STILL wasn't doing enough to attack Axis convoys despite being shipped ever-more fighters and supplies to fight the Luftwaffe bombing campaign. Gunter wanted to do something about that, but the _Saskatchewan_ had been damaged in an intense battle with a wing of Stukas. The fleet had shot down some thirty Stukas and rather fewer Me109s for a price of 18 V-F-1940As (10 from carrier damage) and 73 ship and air crew members, plus three 500kg bomb holes to the deck of the Light Carrier. Thanks to the relatively thick, high-quality RHA plate of the flight deck and hangar decks, the bombs failed to penetrate beyond the hangar decks, and the policy of never storing ammunition on the hangar deck saved the Carrier from being crippled. The extra walls installed as a precaution after the _Illustrious_ was bombed to absorb potential shrapnel proved themselves well worth their weight as they restricted the bomb damage extensively on both hangar decks (though only one of the bombs made it through the armoured deck of the first to the second hangar deck before going off). That had been a strike flown from Crete, which had been captured by the Germans.

The _Saskatchewan_ had its flight deck patched up and was back in working order within half an hour (the large skirt armour plates were quite popular for patch repairs), but Gunter didn't want to risk it needlessly again as long as the ground situation remained stable. So they only flew long-ranged anti-convoy strikes with dive and torpedo-bombers from an area rather south of Taranto and east of Malta. The durable V-F-1940As often came back with scars, but only rarely were planes lost from the raids that the Italians couldn't do jack shit about now. This was since it was at the edges of Stuka range and the fighter screen that was constantly in the air was enough to intercept incoming bombers unless they were thrown in massed numbers, numbers which were prevented from being built up via unpredictable but frequent airfield raids flown off the carriers. The most irritating thing was how he had to get his supplies around Africa instead of the direct route through the Mediterranean thanks to mines and massed Luftwaffe, E-boat and U-boat attacks. They had damaged several ships and resulted in the losses of over 10000 tons of supplies from damaged compartments (despite defensive measures), though no SI ships were sunk, some of them came pretty close, being towed into port dead in the water. One Frigate actually did come in as two pieces, broken up by a huge volley of torpedoes that had been responded to by the U-boat taking a number of depth charges to the face, however with its watertight bulkheads it did not sink. Instead, the stern portion came into harbour under its own power and the bow was towed in by the Destroyer of the convoy, as there were still enough watertight parts for both parts to stay afloat.

Needless to say, the harbour pilots and coordinators of Alexandria nearly collectively shit themselves when they saw it. It was half a ship with its three remaining 200mm guns pointed proudly into the air toward the stern as it made its way into harbour under its own power. Only one of the two 30,000 horsepower engines was functioning (the other engine room had been mauled), but the ship was still more or less manoeuvrable thanks to the two giant rudders allowing the smaller mass good mobility despite a "somewhat exposed" front end. That was followed by the Destroyer of the convoy towing the bow section into harbour slowly before passing it on to a rather astonished harbour tug captain who boat-handled (the shipping equivalent of manhandling) it into the dry-dock Alexander had gladly assigned SI for maintenance or repairs, in thanks for the huge, fast supply runs they did across the Mediterranean.

The stern section followed the bow into the dry-dock and both were secured before repairs began, welding the sections together with three layers of the 20mm skirt armour plates borrowed from the Destroyer's stock. It was a crude repair with sharper angles than the originally relatively smooth hull, but it worked after a fashion and didn't break when the dry dock raised itself out of the water. The ship's broken underside and keel were revealed and similarly roughly patched up by RHA plates. However, it was almost five days before the ship was pronounced seaworthy again, and it plodded its way back to Canada via the Cape, with the rest of its convoy, which Gunter had decided to send home along that route. It would be the new standard route, stopping at Cape Town to pick up more fuel oil for the escorts along the way.

Once it was back in Canada, the ship was put back on a shipyard slip and the repair work, of the same RHA as the rest of the construction, was cut away. The mauled compartments of the hull were also stripped down and the ship totally cleaned out of all combustibles before the heat de-stressing of the hull near the damaged areas began by heating large sections at once to a good 800 degrees Celsius. Then the new plates were welded into place along the construction/repair plate lines, of which there was two per fully watertight section (for sections near the middle of the ship), dividing the section in the forward and aft quarters and a central half-compartment. The work was examined and tested regularly while the rest of the work crews finished assembling the ship to the required number of plates per section of length. Still, the full repair of the warship was expected to take about three weeks of work, after which the crews could go back to working on the other projects under construction.

* * *

><p>AN: The Wikipedia stats of the two types of 88s were consulted, and penetration depth was assumed by me to be horizontal penetration into plating angled at 30 degrees i.e. bounce is possible (vertically the thing could penetrate nearly 80mm at beyond 2 km, and a good shot could kill a T-40 or T-1936B at 4000 meters if it happens to hit the perfect spot.) The KwK-36 could frontally penetrate the real history's T-34 at 800-1400 meters depending on conditions, and that was 45mm plate, not 80mm RHA. Hence I'm having the tanks be basically forced to slug it out at close range.

* * *

><p><em>Toronto, Canada, September 30, 1941<em>

Hannah woke up on the last day of September to get extremely good news "Ma'am, the new tank rounds are ready for your inspection." She got the report from her secretary as she walked by the woman, and nodded, glancing at the woman and checking every detail in a mere moment to ascertain it was not a spy having replaced the woman or something.

"Good, I'll be there right away." Hannah stated before looking at the preliminary monthly report of last month's major military operations and nodding, Gunter was doing well holding back Rommel the way he was, but she still hated how the British would rather purchase the much cheaper American Sherman tanks than her own superior vehicles, despite the T-1936B still being inferior to the Tiger in a stand-up fight. Business was doing well and she was getting a large margin of profit, her company was an exception to the profit taxation laws unless she exceeded 300% pre-war profit, simply because she was after all funding a large portion of the war effort. A plebiscite had made it clear that the exception from the Profit Tax, within limits, was overwhelmingly popular with the people, being more of a landslide than King's 1940 election campaign. Considering how much she had to invest into operation expansion since the war began, and how well she was conducting the war, public opinion had barely been shaken by the revelation of her womanly status. If anything, the booting off Britain had only rallied public support and opinion behind her and Gunter von Esling. The British were portrayed as turning up their noses at the huge sacrifices she had made for king and country, and that Gunter was shown to be an enlightened German instead of falling to the Nazi side. The British were portrayed as having made a huge mistake. However, the US had chosen to fully develop their own medium tank project, culminating in the Sherman, cancelling their order of tanks from her that they'd made on September 9 last year. That had hurt business but those rejected tanks were soon sold and shipped to North Africa to help the British out.

By Gunter's reports, General Alexander was passing lots of money with Churchill's authorization in under-the-table agreements for the purchase of the vehicles and the crews being trained by the detailed but effective instruction manual. There were also some instructors SI hired out to them from the First Aviation Division, since they weren't constantly engaged with the Germans on the front line, though their tanks and APCs occasionally beat back infiltrating columns. The British were still being shipped large numbers of American Sherman tanks, but the crews' opinions were that they were being used as live bait or distractions for the superior firepower, mobility and protection of the rather more expensive T-1936B. However, Hannah wasn't too concerned about North Africa, since she would be able to field a better shell—tank development on the new model had bogged down somewhat with the gun-sight systems and rangefinders—soon to counter the Tiger tank fully.

And so it was that she arrived at the Initial Gunnery Range near Richmond Hill "Well, Mr. Mohaupt, what do you have for me this time?"

"General, I have completed the design of the 75mm shell you wanted, the HEAT model, tests consistently show it to be capable of punching through a good 130mm of RHA vertically and no less than 100mm horizontally into a plate angled at 30 degrees to horizontal." He gestured down toward the tank parked at their end of the firing range "That tank will be test-firing the first batch I have prepared, I used standard manufacturing tools, to make them suitable for mass production. The actual round is 65mm in diameter with the sliding ring 5mm on each side. Accurate range is only 2500 meters and the muzzle velocity is only 825 meters per second with the heavier 4-kilogram round, but…" he shrugged helplessly at that. The usual all-purpose round of the tank weighed three kilograms, with a 1.5-kilogram penetrator, a one-kilogram explosive load in the rear and the rest put into the structural (it had to be sturdy enough to withstand firing yet be able to fragment well when the round went off) and detonator systems. Still, despite some limitations it was a very good slug and had a muzzle velocity of 950 meters per second, accurate against stationary targets up to at most 4000 or so meters thanks to barrel length and round speed. The HEAT round was to be a more range-independent weapon, so muzzle velocity really only mattered for accuracy, or rather precision, especially against mobile targets.

"Excellent work, Mohaupt, now let's see the tests…" Hannah stated, inspecting one such shell (by the weight empty of explosives) and the spin-reducing casing frame, which contained two contact rings with a center frame part, before putting it down on the desk it had originally been placed on next to a disassembled round laid out piecewise (minus the ball bearings of the frame). "Tank crew, you are authorized to fire on targets. Begin with targets at 500 meters…"

Half an hour later, when inspection of the target RHA blocks, placed at 500 to 5000 meters (the artillery proving grounds were near Sudbury because it required a 100-kilometre clear range for future pieces), was complete, Hannah approved mass-production of HEAT ammunition for the A-WTC-75-60A gun. The shells had an excellent safety fuse, good penetration, and lastly decent fragmentation just like the standard APHE shells did, except the fragmentation was exclusively on the outside of the target whereas the APHE shell's fragmentation could be outside or inside. The explosive part of the APHE shell in fact achieved an effect almost similar to that of a HEAT warhead in that it turned the main penetrator into a high-velocity slug with its blast. That was if the round had skipped off the front armour (side and flank shots were by doctrine to aim for as perpendicular a contact as possible or for known weak points of a vehicle type, but shots to glacis…). If the round had implanted itself, the shockwave would typically damage the enemy vehicle's armour, either by cratering or the inside of the armour cracking up into shrapnel or by pushing the penetrator part deeper while doing either or both of the above. It might not be very good for secondary damage characteristics, but those had been what allowed the round to pierce the side plating of Tiger tanks at close range. These new rounds, well, they would give the SI tankers the ability to penetrate their foes at longer ranges than their enemy could penetrate them, unless the Germans came up with a newer, better slug for their guns, or God forbid started mounting the PaK-43 as a main armament. THAT would, once and for all, render the T-1936B or C (improved rangefinder and other systems compared to B) truly obsolescent by SI's standards.

* * *

><p>AN: I realized just now that a standard APHE round would also have some HESH (High Explosive Squash Head) properties and Self-Forging Penetrator properties if the HE load was standard-fused to "explode 0.01 seconds after contact", so I incorporated them. Sorry for anti-OP guys but I am now trapped by physics, all I can do is slow down the research of new technologies somewhat to give other factions time to catch up.

That's all I can do at this point, though I think the huge PR disaster was a huge blow, especially with what followed…

* * *

><p><em>London, England, September 30, 1941<em>

"Is this true?" Churchill demanded with shaking hands as he read the report.

"Yes sir, our anti-aircraft grid has been swamped and our fighters are occupied with German fighter craft, torpedo-bombers are filling the channel ports with saturation attacks and minesweepers have been detected close to our coasts. As of this morning the risk of invasion seems imminent, I recommend we sortie everything we have to fight them."

"Our naval strength is mostly occupied in the Mediterranean… recall them, as many as can be done, to homeland defence, shift forces between all defence sectors so that the nearest fleets can get here within two days." Churchill ordered simply before muttering "my God… he's actually going to do it, and when we were off-guard too" Then he turned toward the other officers in the room "Summon and arm all militias, send Shepard Industries a message asking for help, as much as they can give."

"But sir I thought they weren't allowed to come here after…" someone mentioned.

"DO I LOOK LIKE I GIVE A FUCK?" The entire room was awed into silence at their Prime Minister bodily dragging the man across the conference table and roaring in his face before shoving him backward into his seat which toppled over, eliciting a low "Ow" from the man before he got back up "Ask them to send whatever they can afford to give us, anything helps. Bomber Command, reroute all units to night-time bombing of any and all German ports, shipyards, and offensive ships on the north coast of France. Daylight raids are too risky… unless you are sure it's a massed German offensive inbound. Mobilize the strategic reserve, Fighter Command, it's time we brought it into play, and make sure you secure support from the Scilly Airbases!" There were nearly 2000 aircraft stationed there in 2 Aviation Brigades deployed as Maximum Deployment i.e. mustering 960 planes each in addition to the pilot/gunner trained members of each Logistics Brigade (these units were designed after all to keep supply lines open, and air recon/combat was part of that). "Bring all Army units to maximum alert and re-equip all the French soldiers currently settled in the camps around the country to fight, they've learnt enough English to work with us acceptably by now so we need to put them in the line just in case, we have no choices left." Churchill looked down to a booklet that Hannah had given him 1000 copies of in a big crate as she left, titled _Civilian __Armament __Doctrine_, and sighed "You weren't far wrong, General, you weren't far wrong."

Hannah had estimated an attack was likely in May or June, either in 1941 or 1942, when in fact it had come now of all times, at the start of October. The British people had lost the tension that had been with them all the way until March this year, first with the fear of German invasion and then fear of an insurrection by Shepard Industries. Hitler chose a very good time to attack then, except the winter was going to slow his efforts down some, winter always tended to do that. This was especially true as the British winter involved lots of mud and sludge, which was not good for German armour, which still had narrow tracks and high ground pressure.

That could only be good as Churchill had time to grovel at the feet of Hannah Shepard or Jane Shepard until one of them agreed to send more support than they would be willing to do at the current point in time. Churchill had been right, he'd been right all along… If he had any say in things, the House of Lords would no longer be a truly powerful political entity, or at least those responsible for the previous winter's PR debacle would not be able to find a job ever again and be tried for treason, and preferably be shot by the Germans during the invasion, but that was beside the point.

Britain was by the next day completely mobilized and the fleet was steaming toward the Straits of Dover, severely hampered by gigantic German minefield screens, titanic U-boat attack efforts, and huge bombardments by the Luftwaffe, plus surface warship engagements. They sailed until they reached a point where they had to hold positions to fight it out and wait for minesweepers to clear a path. Suicide would not help their country, rushing to the crossing areas of the Channel would. It would not be enough, nothing really could be enough, and Churchill was secretly praying that the Thames River Line, which ended close to Stroud in the west, would not need to be used, and that the Stop Lines could delay the Germans long enough for enough help to arrive from overseas. If the Americans stayed stubbornly out of the war like they were doing now… things were looking grim indeed as reports came in of German attacks up and down the coast. Daring submarine raids were wreaking havoc in Portsmouth harbour and Paratroopers were landing at Dover, Brighton and Portsmouth and bogging down vital forces in both those areas.

By dawn on the First of October, 1941, bad news came in of German transports landing on the coast from Margate to Brighton, seemingly out of nowhere. Civilians fleeing the fighting were blocking the paths of military forces rushing to contain the German beachheads and so the bogged-down situation festered. Fortunately there was one piece of good news, from overseas. It was a telegram from Hannah Shepard "Am shipping my whole stock of available rifles, 4 million A-WBR-7.5-110A rifles packed in Militia Kits. Thought something like this might happen… please follow priority of equipment list included in Civilian Armament Doctrine, thank you for accepting our help. Expect convoy on your west coast in four to five days. For details on Kit please read your Doctrine book."

Churchill's immediate response was "Can you send actual forces?" over the telegram line. Then he flipped to the correct page for Kit listing immediately and began to read. "One A-WBR-7.5-110A Battle Rifle, so that's…" he frowned before remembering the system "7.5mm calibre, 110 calibres barrel, alright… accurate up to 800 meters or about 900 yards, may be used for longer-range sniping… 12 clips ammunition total 180 rounds. One A-WP-15B Pistol, 3 clips total 30 rounds. Three A-WG-300B Grenades, 300 grams weight, 240 grams High Explosive. 1 Litre Canteen, Helmet, Summer Uniform and Winter Camouflage Coveralls are also included, total weight 10 kilograms or 22 pounds per Kit."

There was a low whistle from General Auchinleck, who was in charge of Homeland Defence after Churchill relieved him of his short-term job as CINC Middle East (Wavell had been shifted to CINC India) "It seems General Shepard's idea of Militia is roughly equal to our Riflemen units. 4 million kits would be VERY welcome, especially with the equipment she laid out here. So it says here those with former Army experience up to the age of 60 that are physically able would be equipped right after the regulars and reserves, and then comes those experienced with firearms, and finally all men and women aged from 20 to 40 not required for child-caring duties when children are evacuated overseas with the elders, or, if not available, a parent. I wouldn't agree with the last bit about the women but when things get desperate… and if she manages to mass-produce enough weapons" he shrugged "She designed the kits and knows what she's doing, so let's follow the next step outlined here, print and distribute this thing to the entire adult population. It contains only tactical pointers, not rules, which is very smart so as to not let tactical intel fall into enemy hands, but I fear some of the womenfolk may not take the language too kindly. Wait, the kit also contains a uniform… good, I would hate for the women to go into the line wearing stupid skirts and such. Can't afford having them trip."

"You know, Claude, I always did appreciate your wit and running commentary, but I don't think that this is an appropriate time." Dowding reminded Auchinleck.

"Oh… right. Anyhow, we need to equip as many of the militia near the combat zones as we can with our current main rifles, and summon up enough forces to fight the Germans back into the sea. The help SI is offering freely will take a few days to get here… and when it does we're gonna be changing our primary armament listings, things have got to change if they're supplying us with that many weapons, and we need to change our main ammo suppliers because their guns are different calibre from the current standard we have."

Churchill held up a hand "Just a moment, Claude, she's not offering it freely, Hannah might only add a nominal charge to our debt account toward her organization, but we'll have to pay her a little, at least the manufacturing cost, later, after the war. Personally, I'm just glad she had THAT many Militia Kits on-hand."

"So say we all, Mr. Prime Minister, so say we all…" Dowding muttered.

The telegram began responding then, and the British High Command members tensed as it was read to them "As for request of actual forces, much regret, unable, am bound by Shepard Industries-British Empire Treaty of 1941, cannot offer actual forces until November First of 1943. However, can send over all 1400-plus tanks which were to equip Fourth and Fifth Divisions, which are under training and comprised of multinational volunteers" In fact, that was why the training was even longer than usual, it began with English lessons. "Can also send over other equipment originally intended for those two Divisions, we will load them and ship them straight away, good luck, Prime Minister. We will periodically ship ready-to-fight gear as well as usual convoy duty. Please ensure at all costs that Hitler is held back from the Thames and Tamar lines" The latter line began essentially at Plymouth and stretched across the peninsula, had partly been funded by SI, and was intended to act as a defence line for Scilly Anchorage. "At all costs until November 1, 1943, sorry, Prime Minister, all available forces will, until that date, be committed to containing Germany in North Africa and wherever else it may strike. Long Live the Free World. From General Hannah Shepard, October 1, 1941."

"Does anyone else want to go shoot the House of Lords members who forced her to sign that Treaty?" Auchinleck asked glumly only to get a show of hands from everyone in the room. "Well we're not supposed to do that anyways, unfortunately, so let's make do as much as we can."

By October 7, 1941, the Germans were dug into their beaches and their forces were growing and advancing inland from beachheads now a good five kilometres deep. Their shipping lines secured by gigantic minefield blankets, warships, U-boat screens based in former France, Belgium and Denmark, they were ready to push inland, having captured several useable ports and being able to offload some 40,000 men per day. However, every inch of the way they met staunch, organized resistance from countless dug-in British Army and French Government-In-Exile troops who had been mobilized upon the invasion fleet entering the Channel. Luftwaffe and Royal Air Force units battled endlessly in the skies overhead as Germans, British and French alike died in the fields of Kent for the mad dreams of one dictator and the stupidity of the British House of Lords. Artillery thundered throughout the following days on both sides of the slowly moving lines. Tanks clashed every so often in thunderous displays of armoured might, leaving behind dozens of pyres that would burn for hours or even days, lighting up the night-time countryside with more than the occasional twinkling barrel of rifles and other small-arms from the dug-in troops of both sides. The grinding advance lasted twenty days over twenty kilometres, ending with the Germans finally entering Horsham, Canterbury, Portsmouth, and several other urban centers.

The cities were as ghost towns, and the Wehrmacht literally took weeks carefully combing each, stumbling across countless mines and traps, before realizing they'd been duped into giving the British more time to prepare. It was November fifteenth before the Germans were ready to advance again, but then the autumn rains came. England's churned-up fields turned into a gigantic bog for the narrow-tracked German armoured units. Every step of the way they took punishment from hidden British positions and soldiers, but they kept going.

The columns kept advancing west, aiming to cut off southern Britain from the rest, even as snow began to fall and the Wehrmacht's mobility fell with it, they ground their way through the British defence lines one by one. They had to rely on Stukas, artillery, PaK-43s and stealthy assault guns to eliminate the opposing T-1936Cs that the British had gladly welcomed off the freighters over the past month. SI had shipped them the tanks that were promised, as well as millions of rifles, thousands of tons of grenades, and hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel, ammunition and food. However, it wasn't totally enough as the Germans continued grinding westward, using a huge U-boat blockade to keep the Channel safe, with their surface warships catching stragglers that got past the U-boat screen and coastal artillery covering the supply lines.

The British fought and bled on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields, in the streets and in the hills. The fighting was to such an extent that it was not until April that piles of secret documents began to burn in the backyard of Buckingham Palace and the Royal Family was moved to Nottingham. Disaster was befalling the British Empire all around the world as Burma became a giant battleground against the Japanese Empire's forces in Siam and the British/Dutch East Indies were swallowed up one by one by the Japanese. The only front that was not in danger of collapse was North Africa, and even there the situation was dire. Gunter von Esling's three divisions of ground forces had suffered nearly 20 percent casualties over the course of the twelve months since their deployment to North Africa, but they had been continuously reinforced by newly trained soldiers and Rommel had not been able to advance even a single step. Even Tiger tanks gave way before the new HEAT shells of the T-1936Cs and kept their distance, relying on the relative inaccuracy of the shells to exchange fire and gain the advantage, as a lucky KwK-36 round could still kill a T-1936C at long range just like the enemy could do with them.

* * *

><p>AN: Next Chapter: An Alternate Pearl Harbour, a wiser Japan, and a more stubborn/foolish America.

REVIEW!


	15. Digging Their Own Graves

A/N: Not everything depends on SI, for example, the US island-hopping in the Pacific did not, other than Operation: Tyrannic which was an SI/CDN only operation. It's really just a few important missions that will give SI enough political pull and public support in the Allied and even some Axis countries (hey, come on, they treat prisoners well!) that Gunter can be successfully voted in as German Supreme Commander after the war. After all, he is the same Gunter von Esling that was in RA1…

Ceramic question explained in detail next chapter. I know what the Eastern Front was, Nenfaer, but there is a reason RA1's storyline (modified of course) is WWIII later, Barbarossa never happened, Hitler decided not to bite off more than he could chew (he thought SI was troublesome enough) and Stalin was content to watch Hitler and the West wear themselves down. As for fronts, we have the following fronts at present: British Isles Front, North Africa Front, Atlantic Convoy Front, India Front, China Front and soon to be Mid-Pacific Front and South Pacific Front once this chapter is done. The Theatres are East Asia, Pacific, Atlantic, and Home Theatre, as will be seen here. This chapter is just the Pacific Front because not much is happening on the other end at present (grinding urban battles do not make for good history archive entries if they aren't turning points), and adding any more would be too long.

S058, Hannah has arrogance of youth, really? 42 years old, chronologically, isn't exactly youth anymore…

I just watched the original Forged Alliance trailer a few days ago, and I was right, the Cybran ending was the canon one for SupCom, and that explained why Capella, 42 light-years form Sol, took the Seraphim 2 whole years to reach. They had to fight a planet-hopping campaign planet by planet with groundside Quantum Gates, and use ACUs for that, not the Ahwassa swarm they used on Earth. Of course, they rebuilt the QGN eventually so that communications/movement would be easier, though this eventually became a problem in the form of "The Coalition will not last another twenty/thirty years without another galactic power in existence to keep attention outward instead of against the other Major Factions."

* * *

><p>Chapter 15: Digging Their Own Graves<p>

_Japan, December 1941 to April 1942_

The entire nation, none more so than Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, had been utterly astounded that the Americans had not gone to war with Japan's full-scale invasions of Burma, French Indochina, Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. All that was left was New Caledonia and Australia before the area could effectively be sealed off and that source of convoys to Britain be cut. Someone had proposed putting an airfield on Guadalcanal, but it was decided that Rabaul would suffice until New Caledonia could be taken and a base built there.

It would be the first Japanese mistake of the war.

* * *

><p><em>America, same time<em>

Incidentally, the Americans were at the time busy cursing that the Japanese weren't falling for the trap at Pearl Harbour, how many more battleships did they have to put there until the Japanese bit the bait? Perhaps they should put a Carrier or two to sweeten the deal. After all, four had been built from _Lexington_-class Battlecruiser hulls. They were the _Saratoga_, _Lexington_, _Valley__Forge_ and _Bunker__Hill_ respectively, CV-2, CV-3, CV-4 and CV-5. Added to the three Yorktown-class ships and the _Wasp_ (CV-9), plus the _Ranger_ and _Langley_, it meant America had ten carriers. Sinking one in Pearl Harbour was an affordable option as it could be fairly cheaply raised and recovered, and the crew would mostly survive, being on-shore at the time. Yes, that was what the USN would do.

* * *

><p><em>Japan, December 1941 to April 1942<em>

However, Yamamoto knew that even if they managed to take New Caledonia and cut off Australia from the rest of the western powers, the USN would not stand for convoys it was offering escort to across the southern Hemisphere to be interdicted by Japanese subs, aircraft or warships. It had to come down to war, and from the Philippines the Americans had a commanding position from which all Japanese shipping could be effectively intercepted. The investigation he'd asked Genda to do was finally fully completed and he could proceed with preparations for a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour at will. Having persuaded the Emperor to agree with his proposal, Yamamoto chose to do just that.

The I Carrier Strike Force intensified training operations over the next months, using some innovations copied from the successful aerial torpedoes of Shepard Industries to achieve shallow-run torpedoes. However, the Japanese still had to work hard, as the SI torpedoes often actually used skipping on the water (nose-up technique) to get shallow entry but still stayed on-target (as long as it wasn't being hit by a giant wave from the side or skipped off the sloped side of a wave coming from the side). Their own innovation allowed the Japanese to make their Type 91 aerial torpedo enter and run shallow enough to be useful at Pearl Harbour. Unbeknownst to them, they were copying ideas from a design that had originally been copying them.

The force had, after additional considerations, been ordered to plan for a long-term war. After all, wasn't the war in Europe STILL going in its third year? Germany had failed to squash Britain in a whole year, so how could Japan force a larger adversary to total peace in mere months? And so it was decided to launch four full strikes waves at the minimum, and that after the airfields, main ships (Battleships, Carriers, Cruisers in that order) and main anti-aircraft positions/ships were neutralized the navy yard, oil tank farms, administrative buildings sub piers and any sub pens were to be levelled to the best of the bombers' ability. After that, if there were any bombs left, they were to be lobbed at smaller vessels such as destroyers.

The I Carrier Strike Force, consisting of the _Akagi_, _Kaga_, _Soryu_, _Hiryu_, _Shokaku_ and _Zuikaku_, sailed from an area near Hokkaido on April 20. On May the Second of 1942, after a final refuelling, Nagumo's fleet quickly closed distance on Pearl Harbour. On the flagship _Akagi_, the Z flag went up, meaning "The fate of the Empire depends on this one battle; every man must do his utmost!"

The six fast carriers, with two fast battleships, two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser and nine destroyers as their screen, proceeded in a circular formation toward their target. The rumbling of aircraft engines permeated the air onboard the carriers as they were checked for one last time. In his command room, Nagumo was tersely sifting through the reports from recon aircraft. The _Nevada_, the _Arizona_, the _Tennessee_… all eight battleships were in harbour, but the best news was that, just like the usual schedule gleaned by spies observing the harbour, the _Enterprise_ was present, having returned on Saturday, and shockingly so was the _Lexington_. However, the first alarming news came soon thereafter, and the whole fleet was tense as they launched the first strike wave and began ranging up the second.

* * *

><p><em>Pearl Harbour, May 3, 1942<em>

In the darkness before the dawn, at 0342, the minesweeper USS_Condor_ spotted a periscope near the entrance to Pearl Harbour, southwest of the entrance buoy. It immediately alerted the destroyer USS _Ward_, which was on patrol near the harbour mouth. It took until 0637 until sonar pinged back a contact, and the destroyer immediately fired depth charge launchers toward the target. Contact was lost after that, but from the oil slick and at least one secondary explosion it seemed the submarine had been sunk.

At 0702 hours military time (7:02 AM) radar station SCR-270 at the north end of the island picked up a huge mass of contacts. It was a newly operational station, and the operators had never seen such a huge mass of contacts inbound. Their report was "Aircraft formation inbound from northeast, on bearing 050" That meant 50 degrees east of north.

The phone man at the Intercept Center was listening to radio music at the time so he simply passed the phone to Lieutenant Kermit A. Tyler. "Yes?" Tyler asked simply. He had been posted to this new facility with no training, no supervision, and no staff, but he was determined to do his best anyways.

"This is station SCR-270 reporting inbound large aircraft formation on bearing 050." The man at the other end said.

Tyler frowned, it seemed that radar set was pretty nifty and contained new tech if it could identify larger planes from smaller ones, but oh well "It's an expected flight, boys, leave it be." He replied, thanks to security reasons not being able to tell them of the 12 B-17s expected from San Francisco that day despite it being widely known. The bearing was about right, within reason for navigation errors en route and corrections based on the radio signal bearing. He shrugged it off.

It wasn't until another radar station reported in with a warning of "large formation of aircraft inbound from Northeast, bearing 050" that Tyler began to get suspicious and sent the message up the line that a large group of unidentified aircraft were inbound. Unfortunately whoever was on the other side of the line was dismissive and told him it was just the B-17s' sheer size that made them look big on radar. Still, Tyler was unconvinced and, upon ground observation stations reporting sighting many, many aircraft at 0738 coming in from the south and east, having looped around Oahu, blared loud and clear over radio "Aerial attack imminent, all units, sound General Quarters."

Tyler's superiors immediately made a follow-up announcement at 0739 "This is a drill" before phoning Tyler and yelling at him, one man after another, for nine whole minutes…The yelling was stopped only when the first torpedo splashes signalled the beginning of 50 Nakajima B5N "Kate" torpedo-bombers swooping down like hell's angels on Battleship Row. Only a handful of P-38 and P-40 fighters had gotten into the air, and they were tied up with the far superior number of Zeroes flying air-superiority cover for the slow, vulnerable torpedo-bombers. They could do nothing to stop the torpedo-bombers or the plummeting dive-bombers, nor were they high enough in altitude to attack the level bombers.

Moments later the first great splashes of water rose up alongside the battleships. Having taken seven torpedoes to its flank the _West __Virginia_ toppled immediately, staining the waters with spilled, burning diesel fuel. The _Oklahoma_ had been hit with four Type 91 torpedoes and began to list severely, the crew, somewhat alert thanks to Tyler's message, managed to counter-flood enough so that the ship ended up settling tilted at 45 degrees, enough to evacuate most of the crew. The _California_ was hit by two bombs and two torpedoes, and only counter-flooding allowed it to settle on the bottom of the harbour more or less upright.

Using their 800kg armour-piercing bombs converted from 16-inch naval shells, a dive-bomber scored a hit on the forward turret of the _Arizona_, penetrating and exploding far enough in that the forward magazine lit off. In a thunderous explosion the battleship's bow was torn asunder and the turret sent flying on a pillar of fire.

The _Enterprise_ and _Lexington_, both parked near the northern end of the harbour, north of Ford Island, had both managed to get off a few fighters and start moving after Tyler's alarm. That was before the former was targeted by no fewer than seven torpedo-bombers which scored six hits to add to the 800kg bomb that penetrated the flight deck and wrecked the boilers and power systems, preventing all counter-flooding. The carrier was practically rocked sideways a bit before tipping back the other way, rocking back, and swaying over again only to roll to a halt in the water as its flight deck finally caught the bottom of the harbour. Only luck had made it be berthed in such shallow water (no more than 2 meters clearance from the keel to the bottom). The _Lexington_ was similarly hit and also tried to capsize, but it too failed in the shallow water thanks to the width of the flight deck.

The parade-like formations of fighters on Hickam, Kaneohe, Wheeler and Ford Island fields went up in smoke and shattering metal as they were strafed, bombed and left to burn by the Japanese. Heavy anti-aircraft emplacements also received a pounding even while they fired back at the 180-plus attackers.

On his plane, Genda tapped out the message for a successful sneak attack (TORA! TORA! TORA!), and Nagumo on the _Akagi_ received the message with great exuberance. He ordered the launch of the second strike wave immediately. Soon, another 180-plus aircraft wave was headed for Oahu even while the first wave was strafing anything that moved or tried to move, framed by the burning pyres of sunken or otherwise neutralized American ships. The first wave turned back as their fuel ran low, mere minutes before the second wave came in over the northern and eastern shores of Oahu. Ground AA fire had intensified and several fighters were in the area, pulled out from storage and put into the air right after fuelling and arming. The two supply procedures had been forced to proceed simultaneously by the sheer desperation with which the ground crews were working, based on radio messages transmitted in the clear of another swarm of contacts coming from the north and east.

The _Nevada_ had beached itself in the harbour so as to not block the harbour exit, but the _Tennessee_ and _Maryland_ were still trapped by their sunken or burning compatriots and could not manoeuvre. They had both sustained only light damage in the first strike, but the next wave would be worse for them. Japanese B5N "Kate" bombers threw more of their 800kg AP bombs at the three battleships as well as the _Pennsylvania_, which was hit three times, though little real damage was done. The _Maryland_ was hit twice with no serious damage (though it looked fatally damaged), but the _Tennessee_ managed to lose a mast and the _Nevada_ had its port-side rudder blown away. The cruisers in the harbour were not nearly so lucky and the cruiser row northwest of Ford Island was thoroughly wrecked (they took too long to get underway thanks to not having any real officers aboard) while the destroyers and cruisers parked northeast of the island were also targeted and severely damaged or sunk en masse by 550-pound bombs from the Val dive-bombers and Kate level/torpedo bombers.

The third wave, consisting mostly of aircraft refuelled and rearmed from the first wave, was back over Oahu forty minutes after the second wave departed. Additional ammunition was trucked out to the remaining AAA guns and the remaining ships were reorganized for battle, spaced apart to give less splash-damage effect for bombs and magazine blasts. There would be no room to manoeuvre except for the destroyers, which could run circles around the larger and/or sunken ships for evasion. The third inbound wave struck at 10:43 AM Oahu time (the carriers were THAT close when they finally launched planes) and bombarded any AAA that caught their attention, plus buildings in the military base southwest of Oahu. They were followed an hour later by the fourth wave. All in all, the Japanese lost 9 aircraft in the first wave, 20 in the second, 27 in the third and 15 in the last strike (thanks to badly battered defences) for a total of 71 planes traded for effectively the whole US Pacific Fleet put out of action plus Pearl Harbour utterly ruined as a military harbour.

Nagumo's ships got away cleanly, bombarding Midway on the way home, while Japanese offensives were occurring all across the Philippines, in New Guinea, and against US bases at Guam and Wake Island. All that remained of the US Pacific Fleet was four battered battleships that desperately needed repairs in West Coast shipyards, no more than twenty assorted cruisers and destroyers, and some carriers, namely the _Saratoga_, _Bunker __Hill_, _Valley __Forge_, _Yorktown_, and _Hornet_. This was as _Langley_, _Ranger_ and _Wasp_ were in the Atlantic.

As soon as the news got to the White House, Roosevelt began drafting a speech which would "live in infamy" as far as the Japanese were concerned.

* * *

><p><em>Washington, May 4, 1942<em>

"Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives: Yesterday, May Third, 1942—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." Roosevelt read, then paused to take a nice deep breath after finishing the first paragraph. "The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack." It had been one of the few times when Roosevelt had been utterly furious, and he'd ordered the Japanese ambassador come to a meeting in front of Congress the next day, making it public knowledge with the full understanding that there would be a massive lynch mob ready on the spot. "It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace." He cursed himself internally for not ordering that no more than one carrier be parked at or near Pearl Harbour at a time. "The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu. Yesterday Japanese forces launched a full-scale offensive in Papua New Guinea. Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island. Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation. As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defence. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, May Third, 1942, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire."

* * *

><p><em>San Diego Naval Base, May 12, 1942<em>

The intelligence situation was reasonably good, they could crack Japanese codes so knew Japan was advancing in Papua New Guinea, but the Australians were offering staunch resistance and the advance had bogged down within a day. However, there was another problem, Pearl Harbour, having been so thoroughly wrecked, was essentially useless as a fleet base, so the fleet had to be based at San Francisco and San Diego, well out of range of the coming theatre of operations. Chester Nimitz was appointed CINCPAC and ordered to use "Any and all methods required for final victory."

The first thing Nimitz did as CINCPAC was get notice from his subordinate MacArthur, who was now CINCSWPAC (Commander-IN-Chief SW Pacific) that the Philippines situation was slowly degrading. Looking at the message send address, which was in Australia, Nimitz frowned. "How the HELL did he get out of the Philippines alive?"

* * *

><p><em>Philippines, May 8, 1942<em>

MacArthur looked around and stated "I shall return." just before boarding the N-EA-1939 Fast-Attack Boat he'd hired from SI with escalating tensions in the Far East. It had been a deal at minimum price as he had been their first major customer back when they only made rifles…

The pilot of the boat waited until MacArthur had put on his seatbelt "Firing up all engines, and… we are under way." The back of the boat rumbled with a low roar as the two in-line 2000-horsepower engines (they were intended for aircraft, but the final design was too bulky) came to life and spun up the two relatively large propellers (there was a gearbox, which allowed the boat to reach speeds of at least 50 knots). With a smooth turn of the dual large rudders the boat turned and shot out to sea, the two outboard side engines, which were also used for hydroplane-style list control for sharp turns, contributed their 800hp each. The propellers' transmission could orient up to 30 degrees down, hence when turning the automatic system pointed the propeller on the outside of the turn downward to reduce the tilt. It was much heavier than most attack boats, so there needed to be more engine power plus a gearbox to increase efficiency.

On the way south toward the waiting N-EC-1939A (newer design version) Corvette south of the Philippines which they were homing in on the signal of, the attack boat looped around a jungle-blocked jut of land just before swerving hard to avoid being essentially run over by a Japanese destroyer. The little boat kept running while the Japanese were trying to hit it, their light AA gun (25 and 13mm guns) rounds pinging harmlessly off the 20mm RHA plating of the rear deck and armoured 40mm turret. Said turret was firing back with standard high explosive shells designed to engage aircraft with high success, packing 600 grams HE per round. To the essentially unarmoured superstructure of the Japanese destroyer, the 40mm rounds were enough to knock guns or at least crews out of action with shrapnel and concussive damage. However, the tally changed when the destroyer began firing with its 5-inch main guns. The first volley missed and the fast-attack boat was rounding a cliff to get away from the destroyer when it was hit by a 127mm armour-piercing shell to the rear, tearing through the armour and out through the port side of the second compartment of the fast-attack boat. The two main engines (in the aft compartments) shut down immediately and the boat essentially spun on the spot with the huge hit, the two outboard engines in the bow section working hard to maintain balance. The angle the boat ended up in was perfect, and both torpedo tubes in the bow of the little boat were fired as soon as a targeting solution was obtained on the destroyer, which had ceased firing to reload. The 600mm torpedoes of the boat were both set to run shallow, so it wasn't a problem in the shallow water… since the tube openings were underwater. Well, it wasn't a problem for anyone except the destroyer, which had its bow completely smashed in and raised somewhat out of the water by the two huge explosions that lit off the forward magazine. The ship sank like a stone (other than the fact that stones didn't typically roll onto one side) as water rushed in its torn-off bow, while the little attack boat puttered around the corner with its two outboards dragging it and all the extra water it had taken on away at a mere eight and then seven knots.

On the boat, MacArthur sighed in relief at the fact that they weren't sinking, though the nose was pointing nearly 30 degrees upward. The boat's stern was only not sinking down as there was still air in the compartments and there were several sealed drums and barrels of air bolted and tied to the boat's deck plus the inside of the boat, as was typical of SI Attack Boats. MacArthur noted the pilot signalling the corvette that was waiting for them "Taken severe damage, both rear watertight compartments flooded, request immediate pickup."

The pickup came an hour later as the corvette in question raced up to them at a full 45 knots and slowed, turning to present its stern which, before MacArthur's astonished eyes, opened to allow water to flood into what served as the cargo room for freight runs but usually worked as the fast-attack base "platform". The "little boat that could", as MacArthur mumbled, spluttered its way in before its mother vessel closed its rear end, sealed it, and began pumping the water out of the deck rapidly. The little boat leaked water as it settled on the deck more or less on an even keel while water poured out of the holes in the hull.

MacArthur whistled as he inspected the damage "For the record, I think the USN needs to buy some of these… for a fast-attack boat to survive a five-inch shell, even a purely armour-piercing shell, hitting it… wow." He shook his head as if not quite believing his eyes, though he had to suddenly grab onto something as the warship accelerated into motion as soon as the fast-attack was secure on its holding stand, which also functioned in holding it in place/off the deck while repairs could be made.

"Well it's engineered to be able to stay afloat even with only one compartment buoyant." The pilot commented, gesturing at his boat which was being held in place by the braces against its 20mm RHA hull "so yeah, after the ballast water is pumped out, which happens basically as soon as damage is sustained and I throw the switch, it can plod along even with only one of the three watertight sections still full of air."

"Nice engineering, I must say."

"Thanks for your compliments." The pilot replied simply "now if you'll excuse me, we need to get repairs underway. Perhaps you'd do better in the Combat Information Center?"

MacArthur was watching the men rush about with cutters to remove the damaged steel plates, and then removing the engines in parts. That was before he snapped out of it. "Oh, right, well, carry on." Once he got to the CIC, he asked the Captain "How much range does this thing have?"

"At the theoretical economy speed of 22 knots," that meant the S-ES-300A engine running at 40% power, which was just slightly better efficiency than running at 100%, though there was an efficiency plateau between the two points "about 18000 nautical miles." Considering that a Carrier made three nautical miles per ton of fuel with three engines running at 100% and the others not doing anything at economy, it wasn't hard to calculate that a Corvette could make about 15 nautical miles per ton of fuel at full power (less resistance from water, less mass, and one engine, not three). Of course, at 40% power, that meant more than double the full-power range of 9000 Nautical Miles. That meant each N-EC-1939A Corvette typically carried 600 tons of fuel by design, taking up a large proportion of its fully-loaded weight of 2500 tons. The N-EC-1937B had only displaced 1700 tons at full load, and with 400 tons of fuel only had 12000 nautical miles range. The Pacific fleet had built its smaller escorts later in preparation for long-range warfare across the Pacific, and had incorporated faster and better refuelling-under-way systems than the old system. Of course, the two versions could carry 800 and 1000 tons of cargo respectively, so if that was in the form of fuel canisters, then though fuel efficiency dropped a bit thanks to increased displacement and contact area with water it was still something on the order of 16 nautical miles per ton of diesel on average at full power. Of course, that was if speed was at 22 knots, at 45 knots it was 29 nautical miles or so at max power (note that at 40% power we've got 30 nautical miles per ton). With improved hydrodynamics, the N-EC-1939A could still make 45 knots maximum, though that was still a far cry from the 50 or possibly more that its smaller and older cousin could pull, and was around Carrier speed.

* * *

><p>AN: The original _Dreadnought_ displaced 17000 tons, had 22000 horsepower in 2 shafts, and could make 22 knots. Hence a 2500 ton ship should easily make, with 30000 horsepower in 2 shafts, 45 or even 50 knots mathematically. I know the fuel efficiency is insane but by calculations it could work out...

* * *

><p>MacArthur facepalmed and glared between his fingers at the Captain "You're serious?"<p>

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"We've got to get our hands on some of these things for the USN…" MacArthur grumbled "for escort duty if nothing else."

The Captain shrugged "Sorry, sir, but they're not for sale, some of the N-EC-1937Bs might be, but I wouldn't know for sure."

It took a bit over four days of fast running at a flat-out speed of 45 knots for the corvette's streamlined but rather wide hull to slide into Sydney Harbour and for MacArthur to step off. That was moments after an A-APC-1935B was hoisted onto the pier via the pier's cargo crane and the rear doors opened to allow MacArthur onboard the armoured vehicle. Right after that, the vehicle rolled off toward the CINCSWPAC HQ building so that MacArthur could report without attracting a swarm of Japanese aircraft or ships.

* * *

><p><em>San Diego Naval Base, May 12, 1942<em>

Chester Nimitz then read on after finishing the details of the Philippines situation "Suggest hiring Shepard Industries shipping and military forces on West Coast." MacArthur had gotten a communiqué from the SI Pacific Theatre HQ in Vancouver before he was finished preparing his report. It had offered help and listed one point five million tons of freight shipping capacity able to steam at 45-knots-plus when empty and 35 when fully loaded down, in addition to two Medium Carriers and three Light Carriers, plus a handful of Destroyers, Frigates and Corvettes. MacArthur had had his suspicions aroused by the capitalization and then read on, transcribing much of the document to his report. "They guarantee Pearl Harbour will be functional again within a month with their construction methods and cooperation by our manpower. They are offering a deal of 20% off on our wartime contracting rate if they cannot make Pearl Harbour able to handle capital ships within 30 days of receiving our payment. I believe it would be very wise to hire them immediately, sir. The firepower they could bring to bear is enormous at this stage of the war, and they pioneered the techniques of aircraft carrier raids, please read the rough specifications list they sent me via telegram and contact them for more information. I would actually say that they are our best bet against Japan."

"I honestly did not expect this of Doug" Nimitz told Vice-Admiral Fletcher, Vice-Admiral Halsey and Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance, who were looking over the telegram with him "Suggesting we hire a merc company… not saying the idea is horrible but it's atypical of him."

Halsey put in his two cents "Doug mentioned this company to me before, they seem to be basically the Canadian military with less political strings and privately owned. He's done a lot of business with them, the rifles we use these days are all of their make. They claim the 7.5-110A is accurate up to 800 meters, 900 yards, under normal battle conditions. Bullshit, it's able to score good kills at twice that range in the hands of a good marksman. I shot my last moose at something like 1800 yards with it and it was a clean kill, even though I had to dig the bullet out of the meat later, wasn't a clean penetration. I say we should contact them, they do honest business deals and stay true to their word, a lot more than I could say for most armament companies… or mercenaries."

"I'm not objecting, if they're giving us a deal on their trademarked and copyrighted weapons, and they are able to mass-produce enough to keep up with our demand level." That was Spruance.

Fletcher merely nodded "Besides, getting Pearl Harbour back online is top priority. In the meantime, if they can support our operations, all the better."

"I'm looking at their carrier stats and I'm wondering just how insanely they worked on these things, and how efficient they were with materials and labour compared with our own carrier programme" Said program had been started in 1941 and was not expected to bear fruit until late 1943, and the expected price was about 40-50 million dollars per Essex-class carrier. Apparently employment in Canada was a lot worse but they had more concentrations of scientists and academics, as they were producing ships twice the displacement of the Essex-class at half the nominal price tag (not counting shipyard equipment maintenance fees). This was thanks to somewhat lower wages and not needing to buy and transfer materials from Point A to Point B to Point C to Point D, instead just from A to B. The yards were also brand new and hence highly mechanized, almost abnormally mechanized by most standards. It amped up the build cost of the yards by a lot but made the ships faster and cheaper to build. Unfortunately, the capitalist system of the US did not allow for as smooth an operation unless it was a mega-corporation, which was rather scary to think of as it might try to start a revolution. The US had no idea why Canada wasn't disturbed in the least by SI, but they ascribed it to a minor power being willing to do anything to get stronger.

* * *

><p>AN: Historically, the building project was 1940 to late 1942 for Essex class and Independence class carriers.

* * *

><p>"Our second priority is morale and to shake the Japanese confidence a little, shake them up and frighten them so they do stupid things." Nimitz suggested.<p>

"And our first priority is…?" Halsey prompted.

"Contact Shepard Industries' CINCPAC, we need to talk. Do we have a secure phone line to Vancouver?"

"Only to the consulate there, which is a bit useless as it's only a few kilometres from the United States proper." Fletcher reported after looking through a few files the US Navy had accumulated on the harbour of Vancouver and the relatively small but supposedly potent SI Pacific Fleet. The fact that MacArthur had deigned to hire out a Corvette starting with the Japanese invasion of British, Dutch and French assets in Southeast Asia said a lot about the company's quality and reputation. MacArthur was quite picky after all, as all of them knew. The fact that he was willing to hire a PMC with women for founders and owners said something even more than his hiring them in the first place. "We could request a face-to-face meeting…"

"Well let's try that right now, not that we can really do anything until Pearl Harbour is back online, can we?" Nimitz picked up the phone, then asked the operator "Operator, this is Admiral Nimitz, CINCPAC, can you get me a secure connection to the America Consulate in Vancouver? Good…" He waited for a minute for the connection to be established "Hello, this is Admiral Nimitz, CINCPAC, could you possibly pass on a request for a meeting with the Shepard Industries CINCPAC as soon as possible? We'll come up there if they would like us to, thanks."

"Understood, Admiral Nimitz, a couple days ago, before wiring that offer of help to General MacArthur, SI put a secure phone line running into the consulate for any emergency contact needs. Hold on, let me patch you through according to the instructions they left."

"How long will it take?"

"I just need to finish dialling the number and put the phones together earpiece to mouthpiece, mouthpiece to earpiece… there." Nimitz was treated to a pretty good quality (considering the rather improvised relay system) but still somewhat garbled-sounding ring tone.

Moments later it was picked up and a clipped male voice asked "Hello, how may I help you?"

"Is this Shepard Industries Pacific Theatre HQ?"

"Yes, who is this?"

"This is Admiral Chester Nimitz, US Navy CINCPAC. I would like to speak with the SI CINCPAC ASAP regarding her business offer."

"Ah, Admiral Nimitz, General Shepard has been expecting a call from you sometime this week, please hold for a moment." The man put the phone down for a moment and went into his superior's office. "General, Admiral Nimitz is on the horn as US CINCPAC."

"I'll take the call right away." Hannah stated before getting up. Jane was better at administrative and research work so Hannah had relegated herself to CINC-Pacific Theatre while Gunter was CINC-Atlantic Theatre or CINCLANT. Jane was CINCHOME, the Home Front. She left her office and walked over to the desk of that particular secretary, as only high-level SI commanders and research staffs could direct-dial her office phone. "Hello, this is General Hannah Shepard, how did you find our offer, Admiral Nimitz?"

"Quite agreeable, we should meet soon to discuss detailed terms." Nimitz ventured.

"Admiral, you and I both know there isn't time to talk right now" Nimitz tensed at that, did that mean she was retracting the offer? "I'll assemble the first reconstruction convoy immediately, it's been ready, or the supplies and men have, since the news came out about Pearl Harbour. I can't tailor the convoys to the damage until the third convoy, after we analyze the observations about Pearl Harbour and what stuff we need to bring in."

"That's… a very interesting way of doing things, General. I'll inform Hawaii HQ to cooperate with your men in reconstruction wherever you need them to cooperate." Nimitz replied.

"Well they can expect us to be steaming into Pearl Harbour four days from now. Don't worry about fuel, Admiral, we'll bring our own supplies and start rebuilding the fuel reserves on the island. We'll need to decentralize the fuel tanks greatly but we can do it." Oahu Island was much harder than Scilly so they couldn't really build the huge underground facilities they did at Scilly, especially not on a large enough scale, as Scilly was merely a pit stop instead of a full-scale fleet base, and was constantly resupplied unlike Oahu which had to hold out between convoys.

"I'll thank you right here and right now for your help, General Shepard, is that all?"

"No, I need to be paid for my work or I'll end up bankrupt fairly soon, so how about I charge you about 70 million dollars for restoring Pearl Harbour to functionality, sunken hulls excluded?"

The strategic value of the base (as well as the original build cost) was so much greater than that that Nimitz instantly agreed to the bargain and agreed to discussing the details. The two CINCPACs agreed to a meeting between Jane and Nimitz two days later in Vancouver to sign the "Pearl Harbour Repair Contract". The contract specified that 10 million would be paid up front with the first convoy reaching Pearl and 10 million each would be paid for clearing and repair of the submarine base and oil tank farms. Another 2.5 million would be paid for each of Wheeler, Kaneohe, Hickam and Ford island airfields repaired to be able to land and coordinate aerial attacks. The naval repair yard repairs to functionality would mean another 15 million, with 20 million bonus if the work was all completed within 30 days of landing on Pearl Harbour. Roosevelt himself was present at the signing, as was King, and both agreed that the strategic value of the services being rendered was far more than what SI was charging, so it was a very worthwhile deal as the US Navy would need at least four months to get Pearl back online whereas SI would have extra incentive to work harder for the bonus, which was enough for them to build a Medium Carrier. Worthy of note was the fact that ammunition, stores, fuel and aviation-related items were not included in the about 20 million CDN build cost of an N-CM-1937A, hence the price was reported so low. While the deal was being negotiated (more like Nimitz nodding, astonished, at the generous conditions and promised build speeds) the first convoy was already on the high seas steaming toward Pearl Harbour at 35 knots, the maximum speed for the fully-loaded-down freighters. All the Medium and Light Carriers of the Shepard Industries Pacific Fleet were sailing in company with the ships, along with their own battle squadrons of Destroyers, Frigates and Corvettes, the latter two classes accommodating fast-attack boats in their sterns.

The total deal would be at most worth 75 million dollars for work that was estimated to cost from 30 to 40 million dollars for SI to perform, hence it was a very respectable margin of profit. Besides, Pearl Harbour would always be open to SI convoys or ships making a quick layover or probably even major repairs after this, without the maintenance cost that came with actually owning an anchorage, even a low-maintenance one like Scilly. Hence it was a win-win situation for all sides.

* * *

><p><em>Pearl Harbour, May 16, 1942<em>

On the morning of Saturday, May 16, 1942 a thick mist shrouded the Hawaiian Islands. For once, there was no wind, and the waves lapped at the shores softly, with only the scraps of fabric and twisted metal still littering the beaches south of Oahu a stark reminder of what had transpired mere days ago. Out of the east, set against the watery rising sun, came an interminable column of dark shapes in the haze. Shore batteries hastily set up after the attack, with guns salvaged from sunken warships, were oriented toward the approaching ships. They had been told to expect friendly contacts from the east, but… The carriers sighted in the mist by recon planes, no fewer than four (the plane suspected five or more in total) seemed to preclude it being a US force.

The wind, finally beginning to disperse the mist and flicked up the tail flags of the ships, revealed to the recon plane pilot a red splotch in the middle of a white flag, framed by red. He immediately tapped out "Possible Japanese attack force inbound from northeast, enemy fleet heading two-two-zero" That meant 40 degrees west of south "estimated speed more than 30 knots, destination probably Oahu, call general quarters. Suspected enemy forces contain four or five carriers, no fewer than six heavy cruisers, and numerous light cruisers and destroyers, at least forty, repeat, large, probably enemy, enemy fleet inbound. Recommend immediate evacuation of all US Navy warships from Pearl Harbour to the west or south."

Alarms and sirens blared throughout Honolulu and what was left of the Pearl Harbour facilities. It took some ten minutes before what was left of the command there, knowing of the Pearl Harbour Repair Contract, managed to restore order and tell everyone what the hell was going on. Then the pilot responsible was rather forcibly told to take a closer look, finally reporting back that it seemed to be "a red leaf of some sort with a red bar on either side". Needless to say, this allowed Tyler, who was now working as part of the improvised command chain, to heave a sigh of relief. His next announcement was that it was "A friendly fleet from Canada bearing supplies, repair equipment, reinforcements, and more". It got cheers from the still-tense gun crews who had just finished manhandling their guns into position to fire on the inbound ships when in range, still, they remained vigilant and kept their guns pointed at the ships even as the freighters entered Pearl Harbour, herded only by a few Corvettes.

Hannah had packed two Logistics Brigades on the boats with their equipment plus about 400,000 tons of supplies. These Brigades were dominated by far by trucks, then tanks, with a few aircraft but relatively few APCs, and were very good for performing repair or maintenance operations. As soon as she looked at the wreckage she was immensely glad to have ordered them bring an experimental system to put on the tanks: Dozer Blades. They would be very useful for shovelling wreckage out of the way, though they would need to take care in doing so just in case someone had been trapped with enough of a water supply to sustain them in the wreckage, didn't want to kill anybody. Jane had suggested putting the blades on armoured vehicles to ease entrenching and mine-clearing duty, but the design they were doing right now seemed at best dubious for mine-clearing… On the other hand, it was good at shovelling gravel.

It didn't matter as the 8000 men and women set to work clearing up debris. The damage of the whole area was so extensive that even with several hundred dozer-capable vehicles it took a while. They were very useful when digging corpses out of the ruins, especially as many of said rotting corpses had ruptured already and their decaying entrails were exposed to the air, radiating the stench of putrefaction. Sadly no survivors were found buried in the rubble, but they did manage to clear the area of wreckage in five shifts of work. The shifts were twelve hours long, and one Brigade was at work (with two Brigades' hardware) at a time to keep things moving with minimal clutter and to still keep all the machinery manned. Of course, most turrets were reduced to just a man keeping an eye out for anything ahead the driver's wide-scope periscope failed to tell him or her, there was after all no real need for a gunner or loader for that matter, so two men were enough to drive a vehicle (cupolas sealed to avoid falling items causing injury). After all, demolitions that were too risky for people to conduct could be conducted via 75mm high-explosive shell(s), though usually just ramming plus bulldozing was enough thanks to the sturdy armour of the vehicles. Of course, even when gunnery was required, the lone turret man was enough, as firing rate was hardy required.

The cleanup, other than the sunken ships, was complete by the end of the fourth day, and the assembly on-site of the prefabricated piers was well underway by then as the waterfront was the first area to be cleaned up. The next part involved patching up the Pearl Harbour dry-dock and floating it again so that more comprehensive dry-dock repairs could be done. That, along with assembly and installation of a few small, separate fuel tank farms, meant that by the first week's end a large amount of work had already been done.

By the dawn of the tenth day the second of the other two 25-freighter convoys in the SI Pacific Fleet had arrived, the two convoys had brought two more Logistics Brigades (these could also by design easily function as garrison forces). Three small tank farms, each with nine large fuel tanks, were functional and more pipelines and wiring had been laid, plus more piers been erected so that Pearl Harbour could function after a fashion as a fleet base. The harbour's dry-dock had been patched-up, refloated, and was undergoing further repairs and patching, and the heavy-duty cranes had been mostly repaired or replaced by several frenzied nights of work. The Sub Pen wreckage was the next priority, but Hannah gave the men and women a day to "romp around Oahu" ostensibly, but since three dollars pay was offered for the shortened six-hour work shifts of the day (usual pay rate for 12-hour shifts was 3.5 dollars a day), no one really chose to go anywhere in the morning or evening, merely spent some time off in between and when they weren't on shift. After all, they had been promised a whole week's paid leave (3$ a day) after finishing the job if they could get it done within 30 days of landing on Oahu.

So, the battalions were split up, two to each airfield, to bulldoze (i.e. most of the time just drive over) it over and over again to flatten out craters before bringing in cement trucks, using cement brought from Canada and water from on-site to re-pour the concrete runways and patch any holes in the rest of the airfields. Tanks were used to bulldoze wreckage out of the way and break them up, the scrap metal recovered was then put in the trucks for return to the freighters. After all, there was no point in letting good scrap metal go to waste and it wasn't like they couldn't be recycled as ship skirt armour plates, besides, sailing the convoys back to Canada totally empty seemed kind of pointless.

16000 men and women were resting after a nice day of having fun and working shortened shifts for almost the same pay rate as usual work days all over Pearl Harbour when the 1st Convoy of the SI Pacific Fleet weighed anchor and left Pearl Harbour at sundown on the tenth day. The eleventh day would begin with the submarine base, which would be a bit of a horror to repair as it had to be dozed, dredged, trawled, and then rebuilt. But if there was anything these men and women had learnt, it was that fabricating buildings in the field from prefabricated steel and concrete plates was, to put it bluntly, astonishingly easy. What took time were the cemented corners of the concrete setting, just like the work on the airfields which would be resuming on the twenty-third day if all went to plan, to get a nice long curing period. The plan was to have the job done by the twenty-fourth day to ensure a good safety margin…

It turned out they did need a safety margin as it rained beginning near sundown on the twelfth day to the morning of the fifteenth, which meant tents had to be erected over patches of settling concrete to make sure it cured well and the only real work that could still proceed was setting up more tank farms, pipelines, and fixing the cranes of the harbour. However, by the twentieth day most of the work was back on schedule with more deliveries of supplies and the arrival of the large specialized cranes that had to be shipped in from the US, for the few cases where the originals were beyond repair. These were really only for a few of the more specialized buildings i.e. dry-dock, as the main pier cranes had already been replaced.

The twenty-eighth day came and the island was still abuzz with frenzied activity, such as painting the internal walls of the assembled buildings—the latitude made installation of insulation unnecessary—and putting finishing touches on just about everything. Unfortunately none of the sunken battleships or either of the sunken carriers in the Harbour had been raised yet but they didn't take up THAT much space and there was still plenty of room. Other heavy warships could still manoeuvre freely with the incessant dredging of the bottom of the harbour by a coordinated and stupendous effort of the corvettes and frigates of the SI Pacific Fleet Main Body. The work finally ended with all windows and doors of the facilities left open for the paint to air dry.

A saboteur was shot that night before he could set up explosives near a fuel tank, but a search of the body revealed nothing. Hannah had a bad feeling about things after that incident was reported, and ordered security tightened up for the night. Sure enough, two more saboteurs were caught, but both committed suicide via cyanide before any information could be gleaned. A packet of explosives went off in a fuel tank farm, breaking a hole in a tank which was quickly repaired. It made Hannah very glad she hadn't put any oil in any of the tanks yet, only having used water for integrity testing (water, being denser than oil, gave more pressure to the sides of the fuel tanks).

* * *

><p><em>Pearl Harbour, June 14, 1942<em>

On the twenty-ninth day, the USS _Yorktown_ with Admiral Nimitz onboard entered Pearl Harbour and almost grazed the sunken hulk of the _California_, so shocked were the bridge officers at the amazing progress of the repairs. The US CINCPAC, and his subordinates Vice-Admirals Halsey and Fletcher, and Rear Admiral Spruance, boarded a tugboat and docked alongside one of the prefab concrete piers that had been put up in the last few weeks. Hannah was waiting for them on the pier, her uniform neat and tidy with the five gold stars over her left breast (thanks to the size thereof it was literally over instead of in front of). She noted absently that she in fact was taller than some of these admirals physically, standing at about 180 centimetres tall, before greeting them with "Welcome to Pearl Harbour, sirs, the harbour pilot who should have been on that tug should be directing your ship to an appropriate berth even as we speak." The main carrier berths, newly dredged out, were on the north side of the harbour, and the ships were to be pointed southeast. (A/N: I realize this is where your carriers start in the RA2 Allied Mission 7: Operation Deep Sea, but looking at a map of Pearl Harbour it makes a lot of sense, except for the water depth, but give a big fleet some good time to dredge the harbour and it'll work). It could accommodate up to four carriers at once, while other parking spaces could be found along the north side of Ford Island. Fuel Tank Farms were scattered essentially anywhere there were piers, on Ford Island's eastern and northeast sides, near the entrance to the harbour, just east of the repaired and now functional dry-dock, near the refurbished sub pen (it was quite functional, though much uglier than the original), on the northeast side of the harbour (where there were more carrier berths) and of course a handful near each of the other airfields.

"I am ecstatic to pay you 75 million US dollars for all the services you have rendered us, General Shepard." Nimitz' voice was actually trembling as he shook Hannah's hand and clasped it in his own. "You… you've given us a real edge in this war, thank you."

"Don't thank me, Admiral, thank my employees, they're the ones who actually put your harbour back together." Hannah gestured to the armed guards standing watch at every facility, backed by trucks and tanks. Then she reached for her radioman's handset "By the way, everyone, your paid leave starts as of tomorrow, a week of freedom, but I'm warning you, if any of you come back with venereal disease, you can look forward to having your pay docked badly and being fired from Shepard Industries." Chuckles came back over the radio, which had been set to the Supreme Command Channel and relayed through the men's vehicles, and then a volley of affirmatives rang out battalion by battalion, brigade by brigade, until all the men had reported in. Hannah replied "Glad that we all understand each other so well, oh, right, remember rubbers, and that goes for men and women!" (A/N: rubbers were the term for condoms) She laughed before switching the radio off and putting the handset back into the radio that a soldier was carrying on his back and pushing the telescoping antenna back into the backpack-like device. It basically was a stereo set with only one speaker, and with the fancy parts that weren't needed for a PMC replaced by medium-powered transmitter equipment (it relied on a hand crank to provide power but was still effective enough) and better controls. This was not the sort of radio carried by troops into combat; there they used short-ranged portable radios to keep in touch with each other and their supporting vehicles, though most of the time it was just one vehicle's high-powered radio talking to another since the infantry rarely had to deploy. "So, Admiral, how do you like things?"

Unbeknownst to her, the US Secret Services had sent those saboteurs to try to make sure she didn't quite fulfil her contract terms and so did not have to be paid the 20-million-USD bonus. However, they had failed against the fact that her Logistics Brigades' common soldiers were specially trained in anti-saboteur operations, which was critical to their trade of maintaining supply lines. The _officers_ (non-coms included) were the ones trained to make sure the supplies actually worked out numerically and stuff was headed to where it was needed or wanted, they handled the paperwork and organization, the troops made it actually work (and kept another check on the supply amounts to prevent theft). However, Nimitz, not knowing any of this, happily signed off on the payment and the transfer from the US National Treasury was arranged immediately. After all, on the surface, the US had to seem nice and generous so that people were willing to deal with it. However, the news had to be sold to the US public in a specific way…

Unfortunately for the US the decision was abruptly taken out of their hands when the large newspapers across the country, having been briefed by drop-off messages as to what was happening, all blared the news from the front pages. SI had contacts in most of the major East Coast and West Coast cities, plus a few others like Las Vegas, hence they were able to pitch the news to maximum SI-friendliness. That included statistics such as how much it was estimated would be required to take back Hawaii should the Japanese capture it while the US Pacific Fleet was stuck operating out of the West Coast. It included a price tag of three US Carriers plus other warships, giving a price tag of over 200 million USD, plus the reconstruction costs estimated to be over 100 million USD for the Hawaii Islands. Finally the tally included an estimated 50,000 American lives plus one year's time, and that item had the comment "Priceless" written next to it. The other side of the chart had hiring SI to do the job of repairing Pearl Harbour, with only 75 million dollars and the right to call in for repairs or resupply at times, it was an obviously huge bargain. The articles were worded in such a manner as to not offend the US Navy, and in fact praise them for their wise decision to hire SI, but they were mainly to help SI's reputation so that more contracts would be coming its way in good time.

* * *

><p><em>San Diego Naval Base, June 17, 1942<em>

Although Roosevelt didn't personally like the sudden media blitz that much (and it could hardly be tracked as the articles had been given to the newspaper offices by anonymous people who did not reveal their faces, and it hadn't violated any censoring regulations and in fact had been rubber-stamped by the censures for making the US Navy look like geniuses) he had to admit it was very effective in making the US Navy sound like geniuses for hiring quick, efficient contract workers. The American public accepted it without question, even though the company in question had a rather questionable reputation for being mercenary in nature. Hence he was willing to approach Hannah Shepard with another possible deal, one for which her carriers could prove supremely useful. They met in San Diego Naval Base after she sailed in with a Light Carrier Squadron (a Light Carrier, a Destroyer, four Frigates and eight Corvettes, plus four freighters serving as oilers and ordnance supply ships). The ship and air crews had gotten enough rest between helping dredge the harbour and running patrols on shifts, so they weren't left at Hawaii like the ground forces were.

"I was happy to hear that you restored Pearl Harbour to functionality in record time." Roosevelt began "And I'd like to approach you with another business proposition."

Hannah nodded before taking a drink from her waist flask (she was wary of drinking what was offered at a diplomatic gathering) "Go ahead Mr. President."

"Japan needs to be bombed as soon as possible for a morale boost after the Pearl Harbour debacle, and show the Japanese that their government isn't invulnerable. I have Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle on the case doing research into what bombers to use."

"I have a simple solution, let's just use my V-F-1940Bs, they're modified to have even larger fuel tanks than the A model and get better range, and those are much better in range than the V-F-1938s, so the 1940Bs can guarantee you get up to 1500 kilometres strike radius with drop tanks, carrying 1000 kilograms of ammunition. We could fly from 1200 kilometres off the Japanese coast, hit them, and fly the planes back to the carriers with fuel to spare." In theory, the things had 1750 km there-and-back range, but Hannah knew theory and practice were different, hence combat flights had thus far never exceeded 1500 km.

The 1938s could muster 1250 kilometres theoretical operational radius with no bombs or torpedo, and the 1940A could pull off 1500 kilometres flight radius, both counting two external fuel tanks. Each external fuel tank gave a radius boost of 250 kilometres or a total flight distance boost of 500 kilometres, so without external tanks the 1938s could make 1500 kilometres straight-line, the 1940A 2000 kilometres straight-line and the 1940B 2500 kilometres straight-line. This represented several large steps up (and several more large wing fuel tanks that also functioned structurally in the wing, but still reduced manoeuvrability when loaded), enough that with external fuel tanks the fighter-bombers could be used to harass Germany itself from Britain if desired. The external fuel tanks were not dropped unless the aircraft came under attack, and for fighter configuration they were plugged into the internal walls of the sealed bomb bay, hence they didn't need to be dropped at all, and could still be reused over and over again as the things were designed to be. After all, the hideously large fuel endurance of the aircraft carriers wasn't very useful if you had to take on more external fuel tanks all the time, right? SI carriers were designed to be space-efficient and give extra space over to anti-torpedo compartments, protected fuel tanks, stored aircraft crates, and armour plating. Hence it was not very good to lose fuel tanks with every flight, though there were still lots of spares onboard, simply for conservation of resources. Private Military Companies couldn't be as wasteful as the militaries of nations after all, despite her company being subsidised by the Canadian government and several others, with protection guarantees extended to Finland and multiple Spanish colonies.

"Very interesting, General, Lieutenant Colonel, what's your opinion?" Roosevelt asked the man sitting beside him, who was apparently the aforementioned Doolittle.

"Well it could be done, I was selecting the B-25 based on having enough range to fly to China after bombing Japan, but if we could get the planes back, I don't see why we couldn't use your planes. You'll have to instruct my fliers as to the details of controlling them though. What sort of fliers do you want?"

"I need pilots experienced with dive-bombers and able to do fighter work, since my fighter-bombers have dive brakes, which more than compensate for the weight when dog-fighting. They're designed as multi-purpose aircraft, so I think they'd be able to carry a small edge over Japanese planes… though they might have a hard time getting more than a three-to-two kill-to-loss ratio against the Zeroes. We'll be able to fly up to 96 off each Medium Carrier and 60 off each Light Carrier, for a total of 468 planes plus whatever you want to contribute. They'll be loading one ton of bombs each, twenty-five 40-kilogram, or 88-pound by your measure, all-purpose bombs, which balance fragmentation, fire-starting and armour penetration, though not really good at any one of them."

Doolittle whistled "Nearly five hundred planes… can we test how well your planes would fit in our carriers? It would be nice if you could give us that many planes to hit Japan with… are you counting planes spotted on your carrier decks?"

"The planes won't fit, I must say, you'll have to spot them on-deck, they're too big for the lifts I saw on your carriers." Hannah stated "I don't spot planes on-deck, too dangerous. There are usually no planes on-deck other than the ones landing or lifting off. But if we had to spot, we could spot another 18 on each Light Carrier and about 24 on each Medium Carrier without hindering operations, though I don't plan to do it. I could give you all the planes for your men to fly, or you could hire us for the job, to cooperate with your own forces. Don't worry, it'll still be a big propaganda victory because US aircraft still bombed Tokyo, though they were heavily outnumbered in the attack group by their allies. Your carriers can probably spot about two squadrons onboard each without trouble."

Doolittle frowned "Why can't you spot two squadrons, your Light Carriers are about on par with our carriers but with wider decks…"

"Before this turns into a debate of experts, I'd like to say that I would be happy to hire you for this mission, General Shepard." Roosevelt interjected "You do good work and you fulfill contracts with high efficiency, and of course you're willing to go the extra mile. We're worried that Japanese operations may be afoot sometime in the next three or four months in the Coral Sea. Code-breakers think there may be an assault on New Caledonia sometime soon, or maybe Port Moresby, since the Australians are holding the Japanese at a standstill on New Guinea. So there's a high priority on getting the strikes against Japan off as soon as possible. Lieutenant Colonel, you have presidential authorization to sign a contract with Shepard Industries regarding the Tokyo mission."

"Thank you, sir, you won't regret this." Doolittle and Hannah shook Roosevelt's hand in turn before the POTUS (President of the United States) left the room. "Well how soon can we get my aviators training?"

"We could get them to training within two days if you're willing to cooperate and we get a contract drawn up. Don't worry, I won't charge you too much for the training, just the op itself. The training will likely only take four or five days if we start with bomber-capable people for the gunner position, which serves bombardier duty in level bombing, and dive-bomber pilots or fighter pilots for the pilots."

"Alright… it'll probably take me a couple weeks to assemble the crews, but you can draw up a contract and we can look it over during that time." Doolittle was hoping the "too much" part wasn't a bad omen…

"Good, I'm a bit preoccupied with the situational reports from Britain anyways, your President says he'll do his best to get America into war production, but I have a feeling he's more focused westward with how badly Pearl was mauled. The British are holding the line anyhow, after a fashion." Disastrously, the US had yet to actually declare war on Germany, and so it fell to SI/Canada to support Britain with the majority of guns, tanks, ammunition, food, clothes and other materials it needed to wage total war with nearly the whole population. They'd also had to build a bunch of settlements in Quebec (it was a convenient way to funnel politically useful money into the province while at the same time helping crush the separatist French majority situation) to house evacuated British people coming over with every freighter. Namely the evacuees were many, many children under the age of sixteen, and at least one elder per family, usually a grandmother or both grandparents if they were too old or frail to fight according to doctrine i.e. those over 60 and/or physically incapable. Needless to say, the education system set up by SI in the regions were geared toward squashing any pomp or national arrogance among the children and giving them a crystal-clear view of just how the world was balanced (i.e. it's North America's time now), plus teaching practical knowledge. The children represented after all hope for the future, a questionable future from where they were standing right now, but a future nonetheless.

* * *

><p>AN: I am substituting a certain city for a certain other city, take a guess, you'll be told in Chapter 18.

REVIEW!


	16. Doing Little and Doing Much

A/N: Yes, Nenfaer, Japan used 6 fleet carriers in the actual Pearl Harbour attack in December 1941, not 4. As for concentration camps, that's next chapter. Bigger planes, we shall explain here…

* * *

><p>Chapter 16: Doing Little and Doing Much<p>

_North Pacific, Near Japan, August 2, 1942_

The oilers had refuelled the relatively slow and short-ranged US fleet in the morning of that day, seven days after they had set out to sea from the US West Coast, whereas the SI fleet had set out 4 days ago at their economy speed of 22 knots and gotten to the same spot to rendezvous in the evening. Soon a boat was sighted on the horizon and the SI Combat Air Patrol aircraft struck hard by bombing it with a standard drop of five 40-kg V-WBA-40A all-purpose bombs. Still, despite being dead in the water the boat managed to get a radio signal off to Japan before being sunk by a pair of 100mm shells from the turret of a Corvette. The guns were quite good at rapid-fire, so as to try to compensate for their numerical deficiency against other factions' destroyers, despite the superior torpedoes and the SI Corvettes actually being armoured enough to withstand 5-inch shells easily at long range (ship guns had VERY slow round velocities at ranges anywhere near maximum). Five of the eleven crewmembers survived and were given medical treatment for any and all wounds as best as could be done by the corpsmen onboard. Of course, it seemed the ones still able to climb up a rescue rope were the ones least wounded, and so it was that Shepard Industries got its first Japanese POWs.

The six SI/CAN Pacific Fleet carriers took up a holding pattern to let the US ships catch up somewhat, while launching their own aircraft. Within twenty minutes the US Carriers involved in the raid, the _Hornet_ and _Bunker __Hill_, were steaming up to the group and also launching their bombers from their current location, 1200 kilometres due east of Tokyo. Both fleets, after launching their strikes, took up a holding pattern with a light CAP screen of 36 fighters lingering overhead, flown from the three Medium Carriers SI had (and had brought), the _British__Columbia_, _Ontario_ and _Quebec_. With how the V-F-1940Bs were engineered, they should have enough endurance to make it both ways with fuel to spare, but just to be safe the operational plan had included sailing another 200 kilometres west to meet the returning planes a bit under three hours flight away from their mission target. A total of 480 aircraft were bound for Tokyo, as Doolittle HAD managed to spot 24 on each of his carriers, loaded out with the new V-WBI-40A incendiary bombs, with 80% mass or 32 kilograms of gasoline in each bomb and with the remaining 8 kilograms being the detonator, fins, shell and parachute of the bomb.

The detonator mechanism was in the opinions of many too complicated, but it (and the bomb) was proven to work regardless of what the bomb hit so long as the munition was dropped from an adequate altitude (over 100 meters) or from a dive. The detonator was essentially a modified grenade with 50g HE and 200g White Phosphorus shell, and was guaranteed to spray burning white phosphorus in all directions for several dozen meters in addition to lighting off Ground Zero. The mechanism was simple: The relatively thin sides of the bomb's fuel section (basically a large container of gasoline) would rupture with shock and pressure on impact, the fuel would splatter in all directions, and the contact fuse on the front and edges of the bomb would light off the detonator's fuse as it sat in the middle of an expanding puddle of gasoline. 0.1 seconds later, the explosion and burning White Phosphorus would light off the gas and turn the area into a firestorm, assuming the contact fuses hadn't already done so with their own igniters. The design had been created in study of the USSR devices employed in Finland and from a report Jade and Neil had sent their daughters after their earlier trip to Japan regarding the materials most buildings were built from. It didn't have the sprinkling of bomblets that the USSR bomb did, but it should work well enough anyways against the wooden/bamboo buildings that most of Japan lived in according to Hannah and Jane's parents.

The aircraft were being rented to the US with strict supervision so as to minimize tech theft by the Americans, as the V-F-1940B was not for export, the latest SI all-purpose aircraft for export was still the 1938C. As for the bombs, they were "leased" to the US at a minimal price, but were still monitored and handled by SI personnel except when loading onto aircraft for training or in this case combat operations. On the subject of such large incendiary payloads, it was a matter of basically lighting as much of Tokyo up as possible to maximize the impact on Japanese morale while at the same time being hard to steal or hide thanks to the size of the bombs. They had after all only been transferred to the SI personnel stationed on the two American carriers that morning to be loaded onto the planes. The 48 from the US carriers were painted in US colours for the job just so the US could make a claim to actually having bombed Tokyo.

The planes arrived over Japan at their cruise speed three hours and twenty minutes later as night fell, near wave-top level to reduce chances of detection. The pilots and gunners had spent their time eating some rations intended to maintain energy on long flights, as well as take turns at the helm to use the onboard chamber-pot that was only broken out for long flights (and for cleaning after the flights). Doolittle and Hannah had argued long and hard over the main objectives of the attacks, he believed it should be a propaganda victory with only military targets bombed at all and all effort possible taken to reduce civilian casualties. She believed they should plaster every military and industrial target they could and told him bluntly that if he wanted to get good results bombing real military targets from high altitude then they'd need to wait a while for her to design a 100-kilogram or 200-kilogram armour-piercing bomb. The 400kg bomb meant not enough bombs would be on each bomber to get guaranteed hits. Besides, it would be better to, as she told her aviators and ship crews in a speech before the mission:

"Strike fear into the hearts of Japan's leaders and shake the confidence their people have in them, so that every night when they go to sleep they wonder if they shall see another dawn, so that every morning when they look or step outside they wonder if they will find a world of dust and echoes." It had been a speech in the huge rally field (it was actually a massive sports stadium that was often leased out to sports leagues for extra revenue) of the Pacific Fleet. "Japan's done enough war crimes to the rest of the world to warrant a bit of justice dispersed at high altitude with large amounts of splash damage and shotgun tactics. The people let their Emperor get away with his war crimes and there was no outrage even when their newspapers trumpeted their armies' madness to the people, instead, they celebrated, with special announcements from their Emperor declaring such occasions to be days of mass celebration. Well, I don't demand that you come on this venture, and you can come ask me for leave after this assembly if you want to stay out of this, as it is an Optional Mission. However, remember that they will sell it to their media as an indiscriminate attack anyways, so what we actually do will make no difference. We are heading out to plaster Hirohito's backyard with petrol then light it up and basically set his ass on fire. We are heading out to show the Japanese that they are not some sort of super-human group, unless it's in stupidity. We are going to obey our Code of Conduct while at the same time showing Japan she cannot behave like she behaves now. We are going to show Japan's people how much they will have to pay for the lunacy of their Emperor, their Government. We are going to bomb Kyoto" She said that on purpose "and make sure they remember it. WHO IS WITH ME?" Only three people had asked for leave out of the whole fleet, and two were asking for sick leave, while the last man's wife had just given birth. Husbands in SI service were literally ordered to take 28 days off to help take care of their wives and children after their wife gave birth to a new baby ("Would you not want to spend some good time recovering after squeezing an object the size of a watermelon through a hole the size of a lemon? For size comparison, try squeezing a walnut through your dick if you want to see how it feels like." Needless to say, the men had mostly twitched and/or covered their crotches while wincing at the wording during the lesson in training). They were still paid, though at a reduced rate, so it wasn't much of an economic problem, but they would be punished by disciplinary action if they did not report in the birth of a new child or get back to work within 2 days of the 28-day leave ending. Of course, issuing this and any other leave besides sick leave (women who became pregnant were relegated to desk jobs until they gave birth, where they would usually be honourably discharged with a child support bonus paid out every month) was only permitted at DEFCON 5. Leave was not recalled if DEFCON 4 was not reached, so a mission going from 5 to 3 in a single step meant that personnel on leave were not recalled. "Optional Mission" meant that they would go straight from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 3 or above, which meant DEFCON 4 was never announced and thus leave could be continued into/through the mission period.

That speech had been before the launching of the strike, and SI Pacific Fleet had been taken abruptly to DEFCON 1 a day before the carriers had left Vancouver Harbour, which meant a mute authorization of Absolute Bombing Doctrine. Doolittle and his men, now flying on the left wing of the SI aircraft swarm, watched as aircraft after aircraft to their right dropped their bulky bombs in-line in bursts of five bombs in a row. Each bomber had loaded a whole ton's worth of bombs, 25, and Doolittle watched with a sort of fascination as the bombs disappeared into the darkness of the night. Then the American-piloted planes were in position to drop their bombs toward Tokyo, and they did so at the military targets in their path en masse, while the rest of the bombs were dropped at the discretion of the fliers. However, Hannah and Doolittle had made it absolutely clear that they were to drop all bombs, without exceptions, and plaster as much of Tokyo as possible with burning gasoline. All military facilities, airfields, dock facilities, fuel tank farms, and warehouses were Priority One (PRI1) targets. Then came factories of all sorts (anything with a smokestack) and grain silos, plus any and all other targets detected that could potentially be industrial or military in nature, these were PRI2. PRI3 targets were any and all administrative facilities, firefighting facilities (they never found any in their bomb-sights though… possibly as Tokyo didn't have enough fire trucks), trains, bridges, and public utilities (power plants, natural gas supply, phone and telegraph services) as indicated on a map of Tokyo purchased by a spy in early 1941. PRI4 was simply the Imperial Palace complex which the commanders ordered the pilots to NOT BOMB UNTIL OTHER TARGETS APPEAR DEPLETED. PRI5 targets were "just drop your bombs while aiming at some, any, part of the city, ideally with higher-rise buildings, except for these areas." Said areas were highlighted on the copies of the map issued to everyone, they were schools and hospitals, and did not require any explaining whatsoever to the aircrews. However, a ground officer did wonder why they were avoiding bombing schools at night when everyone was at home. Hannah had explained simply "The Japanese have a far more fanatical work ethic than we do, although they spend far too much time learning all the wrong things."

Of the 480 tons of bombs (360 tons of which were incendiary, with a few all-purpose bombs and 400kg armour-piercing ones thrown in for any hardened targets) that came with the bombers, only about 5% by official estimate were expended for the last purpose. But that still meant 24 tons of bombs, 600 separate munitions (only incendiary bombs were dropped nearly indiscriminately), fell on Tokyo's residential districts and started fires that would take the burnt-out husk of the firefighting service, highly inadequate in the first place, many days to put out. It would later be from this and later firebombing experiences that Tokyo would undergo, that the "matchstick city" (i.e. Tokyo later on in anime) got its name and reputation. Not a single bomber was lost in the night during the 33-minute raid before they wheeled back at the pre-arranged radio signal of "All grim reapers, back to hell we go." from Doolittle's command craft. Originally the raid had been meant to be 30 minutes, but Doolittle had been too busy to look at his watch.

Only a few even had holes from AAA fire, as most of the Japanese AAA gunners had lost their night vision thanks to the burning inferno and the pillars of smoke over Tokyo. There were no fighters, as most of the ones in the area had been put in airfields near Kyoto and didn't catch up to the bombers. The Japanese had originally laughed that Hannah didn't know Kyoto wasn't the capital anymore, and that she was a stupid bitch, when their spies reported in that she was going to hit Kyoto. They stopped laughing when a rain of fiery death came down on Tokyo instead, especially as the airfields had been among the first things to be lit up, local fighter couldn't even get into the air before being burnt to wreckage. The main reason none of the bombers crashed into each other was that the bombing formations had been coordinated. They'd been flying in formation on the bombing runs, dropping their bombs one after the other to pound the targets repeatedly with more and more burning gasoline. As for the relative lack of armour-piercing munitions, it was because this strike was not expected to do major damage to industry or military targets anyways, at least not with results relevant in the near future, so it was mainly a morale strike. Of course, lighting off a few tankers in the harbour and wrecking some supply depots were also nice, hence why some AP bombs were loaded at all.

And of course, having landed on the carriers in the dark (that had taken most of the training time) the crews had no idea as to just how much they actually did, except that looking down from their planes all they could see was spots of flames dotting the city. When the sun next rose, it could not penetrate the dense cloud of smoke over Tokyo. More than 15 square kilometres (about 6 square miles) of the city, mostly industrial zones and military areas, had been reduced to scorched ruins filled with the smell of burnt flesh and littered with the burnt-out husks of people who had not gotten away in time. Fires still raged utterly out of control in the city, army units were brought in to combat the flames with of all things bucket lines (hence why it took so long, gasoline floats on water), trying to confine the blazes to given blocks. They would not bring the flames under control until over 25 square kilometres or 10 square miles of Tokyo had been consumed by the flames, two whole days after the airstrike. The SI/US task force was long gone by then, and Hannah's only regret was that she couldn't rush (having to loop around Japanese-controlled territory) south quickly enough to make a difference at the Coral Sea battle…

According to later records, the sheer volume of the coordinated strike shocked Japan's leaders and confused them as to the precise source of the strike. Therefore they recalled their fleets from the Indian Ocean where they had been battering the Royal Navy badly. However, it also meant they overestimated the USN's carrier strength and would not launch the Midway campaign until much later.

* * *

><p>Doolittle had a discussion with Hannah as they sailed back toward North America in company. He went over to her flagship, the <em>Ontario<em>, via an SI Corvette. It started with after greetings, "I don't quite understand why you only have one type of front-line aircraft. Would it not be better to specialize?"

Hannah merely shrugged "To each his own, Colonel, to each his own." She wasn't about to explain the very basis of her company's products' premise for success: To be able to do nearly anything with as few models of units as possible so as to reduce costs and, more importantly, reduce logistics demand in combat.

Sure, she was planning on a strategic bomber to be built eventually which would be able to do large amounts of damage per strike in true carpet-bombing fashion. However since those couldn't be used just about anywhere it would require special units to field, and increasing Brigade types wasn't something she wanted to do before her company was truly a world power, she would hold off for a few years. Besides, strategic bomber crew losses were too high and actual effectiveness (i.e. accuracy) was too low in her opinion in the present time, so she wanted to wait for technology to improve to the point where strategic bomber construction would be worth it. She would make do with fighters being used as tactical strike aircraft in the meantime, and make the very best of their era.

* * *

><p><em>Coral Sea, August 4-8, 1942<em>

The Pearl Harbour fleet elements (it was working again, but the fleet had yet to be completely moved back over), Task Forces 17 and 11, the _Yorktown_ and _Valley__F orge_ respectively, had left the harbour two days after the Doolittle Raid Group had left. It was after confirmed intel came in from the code-breakers that Japanese carriers would be in the Coral Sea area. The probable targets were Port Moresby and/or New Caledonia.

A Japanese patrol had been surprised by Fletcher's carrier aircraft, which hit the seaplane base at Tulagi on the Fourth of May and disabled it so that it could not send information to the Japanese. However, the Japanese still eventually figured out where the US carriers were. At about 0820 on August 5, four F4F Wildcat fighters from the _Yorktown_ shot down a Japanese Type 97 scout plane before it could send a message. Still the Japanese figured out that it had been an attack by carrier aircraft. TF 17 absorbed TF 11 and TF 44 (A cruiser force from Australia) that day. Another patrol craft of the Japanese managed to locate the now much larger TF 17 at 1000 hours on 6 May, but it would not be until the next day that the two forces engaged, the carriers passing within a mere 70 nautical miles or about 130 km from each other during the night. The Battle of the Coral Sea had begun.

* * *

><p>AN: The rest maintains historical accuracy for Coral Sea, plus three months (change May to August for the dates) so we'll skip it. Please note however that most of the light carrier names in the IJN are in this timeline going to be names for fleet carriers, but the _Shoho_ is still a light carrier and the _Valley __Forge_ was sunk in the Coral Sea.

* * *

><p><em>August 7, 1942<em>

There was only one problem about the Doolittle Raid, how would they sell it to the Canadian public? What would happen with the Japanese Canadians? Would they riot? Revolt? Hannah didn't know, and that was distressing. She finally settled for selling it as best as could be, with emphasis on how schools (despite midnight not being really a time to learn) and hospitals were purposefully excluded from the strike, and speaking of how successful the raid had been. It was determined that it had to be a short article to keep public opinion favourable after Hannah spoke with most of the commanders in the Pacific Theatre. Hence it was sold as a small entry highlighting how all possible measures were taken to reduce civilian casualties including specific orders not to bomb definitely civilian targets. There were a few grumbles, but no riots or revolts manifested, fortunately. However, this may have been because the Japanese Canadians, now resettled in the Prairies, had come to Canada to escape the situation in Japan OR had come before Japan had gone ultra-militant, hence they kept their voices down. This was especially as they'd been shown videos of what the Japanese were doing throughout Southeast and East Asia to explain why they had been forcibly moved to the Prairies back before the move.

The few that wanted to riot gave up on the idea once they saw/heard of SI vehicles and troops persuading lynch mobs to go home. Anti-Japanese sentiments were high in Canada, and it was only as the Japanese were concentrated into one general area that only three beatings occurred, and those were broken up by Territorial Defence Force or SI soldiers before too much damage could be done.

* * *

><p><em>US Pacific Fleet HQ, Honolulu, September 5, 1942<em>

Nimitz had moved his HQ back into Honolulu after the strategic victory of the Coral Sea and the propaganda victory of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. So, here he was convening with Hannah Shepard for a nice chat about what would probably be happening next. He started with "I doubt the Japanese will give up in the Coral Sea and their isolation strategy against Australia." This was, of course, after dinner had been served.

Hannah nodded "No, they won't, unless their carrier strength is depleted enough that they can no longer immediately conduct offensive operations, and by depleted, I mean sinking at least four of the ten fleet carriers they have available."

"That's true, and Japan's industrial base is… orders of magnitude smaller than ours, about on par with yours. They'll have a hard time replacing crews and ships, the former because they don't have the sort of training programme and organized reserve groups that you do and the latter because of industry."

Hannah nodded "Right, that's why we are beginning to produce submarines for unrestricted submarine warfare, which you already have in effect, that's a good one-up you got on me, Admiral."

"The Japanese are, pardon the term, utter shit at commerce war, they have no idea on how to run a convoy system and no idea how to counter an underwater blockade, however, if your subs are designed to the same high standard as the rest of your gear, then I eagerly await seeing them in action. Our torpedoes are… not great. I would like to buy some of your…" Nimitz frowned as he thought about the newest torpedo model SI had available for export. "N-WT-600-2250A torpedoes to outfit our subs but the launcher refit would take too much work, more than we could manage with our current numbers of yards, especially the ones building Liberty Ships." The US WAS actively supporting Britain, and had declared war on Germany, but it wasn't sending troops to Britain yet as the British had the situation contained still.

"Nice to see you have enthusiasm for our services, Admiral."

"After Pearl Harbour, it would be hard not to have enthusiasm for you guys, unless of course we were Japanese or Nazis." They both snorted at that.

"Thank you, Admiral, I think however that we should wait for the Japanese to make their next move, it'll give us time for more comprehensive repairs to the _Yorktown_, and give your shipyards more time to work on your new carriers."

"Time would be nice, but those yards don't work nearly as fast as yours do…" Nimitz sighed "Your six carriers, with 468 aircraft in all, are the biggest piece of striking power we Allies have in the Pacific, so we'd like to hire you long-term…" That was understandable with the _Valley __Forge_ sunk in the Coral Sea, and the _Enterprise_ and _Lexington_ were still being repaired in Pearl so that they'd be seaworthy enough for towing back to the West Coast.

Hannah shook her head "Absolutely not sir."

Nimitz frowned "Why not?"

"I have no idea what you'll want us to do, probably high-intensity high-risk operations, so we'll accept contracts on a campaign-by-campaign basis if you don't mind."

"That's… understandable, General." Nimitz took a moment reflecting on how naturally the term "General" rolled off his tongue when addressing this exceptional woman, but then dismissed the thought.

"But don't worry, contact us any time with a mission and Jane can conduct negotiations with you even while we are under way to the operation area. We don't do harsh business Admiral, we just charge enough to make a reasonable profit, though that charge does not include the casualty pay terms on the contracts, and what we charge is well less than the strategic worth of an op anyways most of the time. So, don't hesitate if there's a mission you need our support for."

Nimitz smiled at that, it was true, the strategic value of Pearl Harbour being repaired was huge after all. "Alright, General, I will contact you if we require any additional services, it was good doing business with you." Both knew that the USN had no choice but to hire SI again, since the USN was down to four fleet carriers still functional. The _Saratoga_'s repairs were estimated to take until June 1943 and the _Essex_-class program expected to bring in its first new ships at the end of 1943 whereas SI owned six carriers in its Pacific Fleet, three fleet carriers and three light carriers. With the sort of planes they fitted and by displacement, they could be match for any in the world, as the Light Carriers roughly matched other nations' fleet carriers, and the Medium Carriers displaced near enough twice an Essex's expected displacement. They also mustered large numbers of very good aircraft, since the F-1940B was, as with all other SI aircraft thus far, built to be very sturdy, more than sturdy enough to work well as a carrier plane.

They shook hands firmly "You too, Admiral, you too."

* * *

><p><em>El Alamein, October 22, 1942<em>

The newly shipped A-T-1942As, nicknamed "Hell on Wheels" by allies and "Lucifer" by enemies, packed a gigantic punch. SI, or rather its scientists and designers had with the Shepard sisters' support, had fielded a better tank than the Tiger before the Germans could get their King Tiger design off the design boards. The Tiger tank had taken a lot of refining even after being fielded, as it had been thrown into combat early to stopgap against the formidable T-1936 series. The T-1942A was not a stopgap whatsoever, having been tested exhaustively with the new and completely unheard-of drive train. It (especially its armour) was expensive and took somewhat longer to assemble than the older tank design, but it was absurdly effective in cross-country warfare, thanks to the innovative four-track-pod drive train and a Christie suspension system with larger-than-typical springs. It also mounted a heavier gun than the German rivals and thick, well-sloped armour to absorb damage, with the first application of ceramic plating sandwiched in between the steel layers.

* * *

><p>AN: Some technical stuff here, beware.

* * *

><p>A 8-0.5-4.5-3 layering was used of RHA, rubber, high-density ceramic and RHA in that order to absorb large amounts of damage, even stick-on grenades and bombs had a hard time transferring their shockwaves through the rubber to damage the ceramic or steel. The ceramic was in four layers, four 10mm layers, with hardened rubber in between and on each face of the overlapping plates to reduce damage from each shot even if it hit one of the weak points, i.e. where the square plates joined together. During the design process, someone had joked about putting layers of bathroom tiles on tanks, though that lasted only up until they saw that if made out of high-density well-made ceramic the thing was more effective than RHA at absorbing punishment and slowing down inbound warheads. Skirt armour covered the track pods, although testing had revealed that the tank could stay mobile with only one track pod working per side. They could set off HEAT warheads before the main armour and thus could theoretically save a tank. The armour of the turret was even thicker, with a 3-0.5-4.5-3-0.5-4.5-3 layering pattern of RHA-rubber-ceramic-RHA-rubber-ceramic-RHA putting more faith into the ceramic plating. As for engine power, it had the 1500-horsepower gasoline engine that was used in the F-1938 and F-1940 all-purpose aircraft, allowing it a maximum fully loaded speed of 66.6 kmh (faster than most other military vehicles) hence the nicknames. It also had fire-on-the-move capability (still maintaining a hit ratio no less than 75% of stationary hit ratio at all distances up to 2000 meters) up to 45 km/h with the refined suspension system. Thanks to the fact that the first combat the tank experienced was in hit-and-run operations during the retreat from the Gazala Line, it was known to the British as the Raider Tank. Thanks to the low profile and armour being equal on all sides (sloping scheme was still 30 from horizontal on glacis and 45 everywhere else) it was also nicknamed by the British as the "Survivor Tank".

The ceramic armour proved quite good, using ceramic with rubber padding, since unless it was hit twice in the same spot it was very difficult at best for enemy rounds to penetrate, much harder than just plain RHA. This was as the plates in each thin layer were arranged in bathroom tile style so a pulverized section would not propagate damage through the armour well. The tiles were rimmed with a relatively soft plastic which absorbed shockwaves well and thus stopped damage propagation. As for external explosives, the rubber shock absorbing layer under the external RHA layer would negate most impacts and minimize damage to ceramic, as well as shock propagation through the armour. Certainly it was more expensive to produce, but that was why repairs were highly simplified, in the form of essentially glue holding the ceramic and external RHA plates together, with welded corners for the external RHA. Thus it wasn't too hard to remove a plate or two of the RHA, peel away the damaged rubber tiles (even the rubber layer was in tile form), pick out with a brush the broken ceramic pieces/dust, and insert new tiles into the plastic frame. Of course, this usually meant removing a section of the frame, replacing the damaged tiles, and heating the frame so it could reset into place around the replaced tiles. Usually the flat surface used for this task is a spare RHA plate upon which it's all put to be baked until pliable (usually using an electric barbeque that comes with the tank and is hooked up to the dynamo), then the pieces are bent back into shape while still elastic and shape-able without causing excessive material stress. After that a thin layer of glue was applied and the frame with tiles dried, then it was put back into place on the tank as part of the ceramic layers. Finally new rubber tiles where required are applied and the RHA top plate put on, then bolted/lightly welded into place. Sure, the repair wasn't that simple, but it only took a couple hours to fully patch up the armour for an experienced tank crew and repairing in the field continuously could last the tank several months before a major armour overhaul, or at least the glacis and turret front, was truly due. Hence it was an extraordinarily good vehicle despite being expensive and SI-exclusive (thus far), far superior to anyone else's current vehicles about as much as the Tiger was superior to typical British tanks available right now.

With the most recent refit (and new equipment add-on) however the tank became much more than just a raider. This, along with a few minor tactical concerns, brought Montgomery and von Esling together for a discussion on October 22, 1942. Gunter started the talk based on what he'd seen of Montgomery's plan "There are massive German armoured columns on the other side of those lines, General, as we both know, so are you sure it is wise to use minesweeping tactics that only allow for single files of tanks? I don't think even my Raider Tanks could stand up to the amount of fire they would send our way. We don't have the luxury of such massive reinforcements as the Germans are getting."

Montgomery spread his hands helplessly "What else do you propose we do? Let them seize the oil fields of the Middle East?"

"Nope, I was thinking of using my newest shipments of gear to counteract the German minefields. Do you want a preview?"

"I have everything in place for Operation Lightfoot anyways, so might as well…" He stopped short upon leaving his tent "what the…"

"Behold, the Tank Dozer Blade add-on, based off snow-ploughs that are employed in Canada in the winter-time on roads and sideways. This strip of land marked out in yellow has a bunch of fake landmines buried in it, watch what happens when the T-1942A pushes its way through."

Needless to say, the fake minefield was totally cleared and a path was forged by the vehicle, starting with lowering the blade beneath track bottom level and then moving forward enough to get the ploughed ditch to be some 70 centimetres or so deep relative to the ground, and finally bringing it back to track level so it didn't try to dig any deeper. The tank was greatly slowed, but it was much faster than infantry clearing mines and each tank could clear a path which later vehicles could theoretically follow. Almost instantly, the 800 or so T-1942s (hey, they were relatively hard to mass-produce!) that had already arrived (The Light Tank Brigades had been formally upgraded to "Attack Armour Brigades") meant that the offensive would be… trench warfare. It would quite literally be trench warfare thanks to the fact that they would in fact be digging trenches (with 1.4 meter depth from ramparts to bottom) as they went through the German minefields. They had fairly low profiles, so the trenches would make them difficult to hit from the side or rear but their 95mm guns could still traverse and fire just fine over the top of the mounds of dirt that were to be on either side.

"Well, I think we need to reconsider the name of Operation Lightfoot…" Montgomery stated good-humouredly. "Maybe Snowplough would be a better codename…"

El Alamein turned out to be a crushing rout for Army Group Africa, though this was mostly as Rommel was sick, in Tripoli, and thus was not present near the front to do his best to counter Gunter and Montgomery move for move, though if he had been there, all he could have done was ended the rout at Gazala, since the new Raider Tanks on the Allied side proved to have too much armour for anything except a PaK-43 to have any chance of disabling. As it was, the rout got to the city of Banghazi before it was finished and Rommel managed to organize a defensive that stalled the Allied advance, which was beginning to outrun its own supply line anyhow. SI vehicles and units could have kept going, but Gunter wisely chose not to advance into overwhelming numerical superiority in the desert without enough back-up, since Rommel had scrambled up more PaK-43s and air support which could actually damage his T-1942s effectively, although catastrophic kills were hardly common (in the whole advance, he'd lost exactly three tanks that way and had to salvage them). Besides, he didn't need to end it immediately, as tying up German troops was the only way he could technically support England at this time. When the time neared to the great counter-offensive in England, though, he would make sure Army Group Africa was weak enough fur Eighth Army to eliminate before embarking his forces on ships to England.

* * *

><p>AN: After more research, I discovered _Akagi_'s sister ship was not the _Kaga_ but rather the _Amagi_, destroyed in an earthquake, well, this time that did not happen, Japan has many more fleet carriers, I'm not giving it any light carriers whatsoever to make the balance not absurdly one-sided in the Pacific. Otherwise the Allies would have too much of an advantage.

* * *

><p><em>Japan, February, 1943<em>

It took a thinly veiled (okay, so maybe that was a lie, it wasn't veiled at all) threat to resign by Yamamoto before the Imperial General Headquarters agreed to his concept of another Central Pacific operation. He was committing all of Japan's carrier strength, including the repaired _Shokaku_ and the _Zuikaku_, neither of which had aviators of the calibre they had begun the Coral Sea with. Although it was not immediately apparent, and no one quite figured it out at the time, Japan's training system was in its essence inadequate. Even with a smaller population pool to draw on, and with far less budget, the process SI employed was far more efficient, cycling veterans back every few months to take shifts at the instructor schools to teach trainees. This had upheld and even surpassed demand even with the losses incurred in Britain and now North Africa, losses incurred in the maintaining of air superiority and bombarding of German units and supply lines.

* * *

><p><em>Near Midway Atoll, April 4, 1943<em>

So it was that seven Japanese carriers, the _Akagi_, _Amagi_, _Kaga_, _Zuikaku_, _Shokaku_, _Soryu_, and _Hiryu_, sailed in company as the 1 Carrier Strike Force with a light escort to attack Midway. A simultaneous attack was to be mounted on the Aleutians with two more Fleet Carriers, the _Ryujo_ and _Taiyo_. The last two Fleet Carriers, the _Zuiho_ and _Hosho_ were committed to accompanying the Main Body of the Japanese battle fleet, expected to steam forth to do direct battle with any enemy forces it located. Unfortunately for the Japanese, Yamamoto's plan was too complicated, and the reconstructed Pacific Fleet HQ had managed to crack his codes enough to get a general idea of what the Japanese were up to. That was why despite Yamamoto's improvisation with the Guard Force ready to intercept American ships heading to the Aleutians, since the attack there would be a day earlier than the Midway attack thanks to technical difficulties with the Kido Butai (Mobile Fleet i.e. the main carrier force), the Americans didn't bite the bait.

By the time Japanese recon subs got into positions outside Pearl Harbour, the few Fleet Carriers the US Pacific Fleet still had battle-ready, namely the _Saratoga_, _Bunker __Hill_, _Hornet_ and _Yorktown_ (the _Enterprise_ and _Lexington_ were still being repaired on the West Coast) had long since sailed to a flanking position to the northeast of Midway and Hannah's SI Pacific Fleet was somewhat further to the northeast, essentially outside Japanese aircraft strike range while still keeping the expected Japanese Fleet location inside their own strike envelope. It was good carrying large, long-endurance aircraft, even though this reduced the number of planes the carriers could carry (being twice as heavy as most other carriers had its pluses) to numbers similar to other carriers available at present. Nagumo had some 450 aircraft operating from his seven flight decks. The US had a combined total of 300 carrier planes plus 115 land-based planes; hence there was nearly numerical parity. However, there were a total of 468 aircraft operating from the SI Pacific Fleet's flight decks. A few quick communications between the two fleets ensued. Hannah opened it with "Hey, Admirals, maybe someone should be ready to chop up the Japanese carriers in the north. We've got better torpedo and dive bombing capability than the Japanese, you're better in only dive bombers than them, and our fighters can effectively match up against the Zero." Of course that was mainly benefitting from the dive brakes "Yours can't, so maybe you should consider going to take down those IJN elements that will be hitting the Aleutians."

"That looks to be just a distraction right now, it doesn't matter as much as the large carrier force that will be in this area." Vice-Admiral Fletcher replied.

"Well, I hope your boys can tell pale blue-grey from white, because my planes also have red maple leaves painted on them, just remind them to distinguish Maple Leaf from Circle…"

"They've all been briefed. Your Maple Leaf is painted on the underside of the fuselage of the plane between the wings and on the back of the plane, plus the sides of the vertical tail fin, so it won't be a problem."

"Good, I'm hoping we pick up the Japs soon…"

The first report from a PBY Catalina came in right then and there. The Japanese main fleet had been sighted, not the transports that had been sighted by B-17s the previous day. Soon another report came in of a large horde of aircraft bound for Midway, which managed to penetrate the light interceptor screen over Midway easily and bomb the airfields, though they were ineffective as the airfields were now empty of aircraft. American AAA fire managed to damage many Japanese aircraft and claimed at least a third downed, though the actual record was somewhat less. Yamamoto's faulty dispositions meant that the Japanese carrier force didn't have enough screen elements with recon aircraft, unlike the SI and US ships, using V-F-1940Bs and SBD Dauntless dive bombers for fleet recon, which were immediately recalled as aircraft were fuelled and armed. SI Carrier Doctrine held that these processes were to be conducted only on the flight deck or top hangar deck, all fuel lines not being used were to be drained, and that ammunition was to otherwise not be in the hangar decks or flight deck.

It was 0800 when Nagumo finally received the report of an enemy task force "twenty ships, possibly enemy, speed more than 20 knots…" on a heading toward Midway at 200 miles to his east. He was thrown into a fit of indecision. At that range, only carriers would be a threat, but if there were carriers then an attack had to be launched immediately. He ordered a pause to the rearming of his bombers, which were being fitted with bombs for ground attacks instead of torpedoes, and ordered the pilots to ascertain enemy force composition. Nagumo soon lost patience and ordered the rearming of the "Kate" torpedo-bombers and the arming of the "Val" dive-bombers. Even if it was just a bunch of cruisers, he could still eliminate a part of the enemy's mobile fleet.

At 0820 the plane reported "Enemy force accompanied by what appears to be a carrier." Nagumo began launching his aircraft, those spotted on deck, immediately. He then ordered the _Amagi_ and _Soryu_ to receive the worst-damaged members of the returning strike from Midway while the other five carriers launched their own strikes. Once the returning planes were packed on the first two carriers, Nagumo ordered the relatively undamaged planes to circle while their brethren formed a gathering circle above the fleet. Finally, after launching all his strike aircraft, Nagumo landed his first strike, though several planes had to ditch because of lack of fuel. This recovery went on until 0920, the Japanese fleet having turned northeast at 0918.

And so it was that the torpedo squadrons of the US carriers, equipped with the slow and vulnerable Devastator torpedo-bomber as opposed to the nimble Kate of the Japanese, turned north from their initial search to come upon the Japanese ships. They were essentially without fighter escort (sixteen Wildcats was nothing…) and had slow and unreliable torpedoes, but they went in for the shot anyways. As Waldron told his pilots as his last message, "I want each of us to do his utmost to destroy our enemies. If there is only one plane left to make a final run in, I want that man to go in and get a hit, may God be with us all." They were smothered by Zeroes flying Combat Air Patrol, out of the 70-plus torpedo bombers that came in waves toward the Japanese, only 15 managed to drop their torpedoes before being shredded by AAA or Zeroes, and of those fifteen only one torpedo hit—and failed to detonate.

However, the torpedo-bombers' sacrifice was not in vain, for out of the sun came the plummeting Dauntless dive bombers loaded with 1000-pound bombs. Three targeted the _Akagi_, the flagship, for two hits, one to the aircraft lift, plunging down into the hangar and starting a fire, and the second exploded among the parked aircraft near the front of the ship, the just-recovered members of the first strike against Midway. The _Kaga_ was pasted with 17 bombers getting 3 hits, and the _Amagi_ and _Soryu_ were set utterly ablaze as their decks, still strewn with aircraft from their own strikes which hadn't been launched yet, were hit. However, only the last two had suffered lethal damage despite American claims, and three fleet carriers in the Carrier Strike Force were as of yet untouched (though only one of the three was with the main Japanese carrier force, as two of the three were in a separate group to the north).

That was all too soon about to change as the coordinated phase of the SI-US operation began, with a swarm of V-F-1940Bs, dive brakes deployed, diving out of the sun from where they had circled, having followed the US dive-bombers as close escort. They were taking advantage of the US bombers drawing the Zeroes away from the carriers. The fighter configuration planes set their paths on the tails of the Zeroes chasing the fleeing Dauntless dive bombers and engaged them in a ferocious dogfight at masthead level, using their better climb and more powerful engines to their advantage. The dive-bomber configurations, loaded with two 400kg armour-piercing bombs each, came screaming down toward the Japanese ships alongside the torpedo-bomber configuration planes.

The SI fleet had sortied 360 of 468 planes, leaving 36 flying CAP over the American fleet and 72 over their own. Considering the planes had fuel endurance of up to eight hours with full external fuel tanks and full wing secondary tanks at cruising speed, it was hardly a problem to do this. Of the 360 planes sent to attack, 120 had been fitted as air-superiority fighters, 144 as level/dive bombers and 96 as torpedo-bombers. With the unique capability of diving attacks and high speed, the torpedo bombers risked skipping torpedoes at high speed across the water, but thanks to the direction of the waves that would not be a problem, and in fact would be advantageous.

The _Akagi_ received no fewer than seven hits from 400kg bombs, plus a one-ton N-WT-450-1000A torpedo dropped from a dive smashing down through the flight deck and several more decks before its warhead, fuel and air supply all went up in a great explosion. The ship slowed immediately and began to list to port. Nagumo soon had to transfer his flag to a light cruiser in the screen. The remaining torpedo-bombers that had been aiming for it yawed over and targeted the next damaged ship, the _Kaga_, while the dive-bombers simply levelled out and folded dive brakes back along the wings to serve as level bombers. Their machine-guns tapped out a steady volley as they approached the _Kaga_ from straight ahead, silencing many AAA guns thanks to dead crews or crews driven into cover (others thought the turreted AA SI used on ships to be too weight-inefficient, they were horribly wrong). However, a few were still hit and one crashed down into the lift before exploding, with all its secondary wing tanks, external fuel tanks, and internal fuel supply erupting outward in a sheet of fire, propelled by the two 320kg high explosive charges. It swept the hangar deck of the _Kaga_, tearing parked aircraft into scraps, and lighting off everything the many litres of aviation gasoline touched. Sailors screamed in pain as they were burnt and cooked alive inside their ship, but the new ventilation added over their heads moments thereafter in the form of a number of giant holes thanks to 400kg bombs were no relief for the men burning and dying in the, at last, fatally wounded ship. The ship was also left where it was, dead in the water, while the surviving fliers peeled off to join the fighter squadrons battling it out with Zeroes. After all, having dropped their bombs and torpedoes, with the bomb bay doors closed, they were perfectly capable of nimble dog-fighting.

The already fatally wounded _Amagi_ and _Soryu_ had been hit by a few more bombs, but a large amount of attention was directed at the lone undamaged carrier present, which did not stay undamaged for long. Being a separate group some miles to the north of the other carrier group, the _Shokaku_ and _Zuikaku_ were not witness to or part of the holocaust, but the confused radio signals told the story well enough. The _Hiryu_ became the target of no fewer than 30 torpedo-bombers and some 41 dive-bombers. This meant a total of a bit fewer than 80 bombs and 29 torpedoes (some planes were shot down before they could release) were hurled at the lone carrier. Having a gunnery record of more than 50% against wildly evasive targets at 45 knots meant that over 80% of the rounds hit the carrier, which was making only about 25 knots. It took less than a minute for the _Hiryu_ to tear itself asunder in a series of huge explosions and slip beneath the waves. There hadn't even been enough time to transfer the Emperor's Portrait, though that was no matter as it had burnt up thanks to a bomb penetrating the room it was held in anyways.

As the Zeroes tried to swarm back to save their carriers they found themselves stacked up against increasing numbers of opponents, since the bombers, after finishing bombing or torpedo runs, joined the battle for aerial superiority. The Zero was better than the Americans' Wildcat in turning radius, climbing speed, and everything except diving and volume of fire. It found itself superior to the V-F-1940B in only a few things: max slug size, smaller aircrew, and rate of loss. The first was as the Zero had two 20mm cannons plus two 7.7mm MGs, the V-F-1940B inherited the six 12.5mm wing MGs and two rear gunner 12.5mm MGs the 1938 series had, and thus had the higher rate of fire. The second was as the Zero was single-seat and SI's all-purpose aircraft were without exception two-seaters, with the pilot and gunner/bombardier (the gunner also served bombardier duty for level bombing, the pilot took care of this during dive or torpedo-bombing). The third, well… the kill ratio was currently a three-to-one favourable ratio for SI, thanks to the element of surprise and planes supporting each other, as well as manoeuvrability offered by dive brakes (without the 1940s using dive brakes, the Zero would have out-matched them in manoeuvrability easily). The fact that the Zeroes were severely outnumbered and didn't have any rear-pointing weapons unlike its adversary didn't help. It was almost as bad as the rear turret of the Dauntless for the Zeroes…

While the massacre was spreading through Nagumo's fleet one ship after another, Yamamoto could only surge east with the Main Body of the Combined Fleet toward the Kido Butai (Mobile Fleet) in an effort to provide whatever support was possible. However, the American ships were also in a spot of trouble. The Japanese strike planes had arrived over the American carriers and the fighters from all three sides clashed in a cacophonous symphony of destruction. Aichi D3A2 "Val" dive bombers and Nakajima B5N2 "Kate" bombers went to the attack toward the wildly manoeuvring US carriers. As for why they were found instead of the much larger SI detachment, which had some 60-plus warships as opposed to the US fleet's 30, it was simple: The US carriers were the first ones sighted, as the SI fleet was about 100km away further than the US one and made much less smoke from their funnels, so they were less conspicuous anyways.

The Wildcat screen had intercepted the inbound enemies quite a few kilometres from the actual fleet, with the F-1940s holding back by a few kilometres. The appallingly poor discipline of the Japanese pilots (newer ones only) saw quite a number of bombers ditch bombs and attempt to dogfight the intercepting F4Fs. Such a thing was, unless over a targetable area or stripped of fighter escort, strictly forbidden by SI doctrine. Though evasive movements and running battles were permitted, jettisoning bombs was a no-no unless real damage was sustained to the plane or they were over the target anyhow.

However, the screen of Zeroes managed to distract most of the SI and US fighters for long enough that the Kate and Val bombers got through to begin attack runs on the US fleet with 800kg armour-piercing bombs and Type 91 serial torpedoes. Many were lost but in return they fed three bombs and two torpedoes into the _Yorktown_, snuffing out boiler fires like a tsunami would snuff out a candle, and destroying the radio communications gear. Repairs were soon under way and even while the pursuit of the Japanese planes continued (with the SI fighters doing most of the pursuing) the Yorktown was again building up speed from the dead stop it had been at moments ago. The Japanese lost their pursuers in a bank of clouds though, so the _Shokaku_ and _Zuikaku_ were still well hidden.

Hannah was quite irritated by this loss of contact, but she understood, everyone made blunders, even she'd made a few in her younger days "What's the newest relevant intel we have from the Japanese?"

"The US subs are picking up radio chatter" The torpedoes the US used were so shitty that the subs were relegated to stealthy listening duty instead. "Rear-Admiral Yamaguchi will be going down with his ship, the _Soryu_."

Hannah blinked "Go down with his ship? He's probably one of the best carrier sailors and strategists the Japanese have! Dumb fucker… it's these times when I both really love and really hate their _bushido_ code. On one hand, it gets rid of skilled opponents, on the other hand, it gets rid of skilled opponents."

"I'm guessing that's why we chose to nickname the code the bullshit-o code." Rear-Admiral Williams commented dryly. He'd been promoted when Hannah realized SOMEONE had to handle the administrative paperwork, and it wasn't going to be her as she had to handle SI's global strategy. Jane had enough work with the home front as is so she wasn't an option either.

"Meh, well, it's the Japanese's own loss, search for the last two carriers, steam west at economy speed and tell our pilots we're doing so." That way the aviators would know which general area to look in for home. "How are the Americans doing?"

"The Yorktown's been damaged but it's under way again and they're working hard to fix the damage, which has been contained." The comms officer told her.

A second slug-out resulted in the near-annihilation of the Japanese aviators. It was "near" only because three Japanese fliers were rescued from the water by the couple SI ships that were with the US fleet to help out in whatever way they could. Of course, it was mainly to keep an eye on things at the US end of the contract, just like how the US stationed two of their destroyers with the SI fleet. The contract had after all specified that downed aviators were to be rescued unless they attacked the rescuers after being downed. The Yorktown was now thoroughly disabled and listing at over 20 degrees. Captain Elliott Buckmaster of the Yorktown ordered "Abandon Ship" as the list reached an alarming 25 degrees, fearing the ship would capsize.

Both sides groped for each other in the slowly falling darkness before the SI and US fleets turned east to avoid a potential confrontation with Japanese surface elements at night. The Shepard Industries Pacific Fleet launched multiple strikes in the night with its heavily-trained carrier aviators and lost a few more of them. They only managed to damage a Japanese battleship, sink another, and send a handful of cruisers and destroyers to the bottom as the Japanese were running with minimal lights and were difficult to spot on the dark sea. The planes could only find their own carriers by radio signal strength indicators on their radio sets, which allowed them to home in on their carriers (it also let them find the Japanese via heading toward their radio chatter). The US subs launched attack after attack in the night, but other than contributing assistance to one of the carrier aircraft kills, a heavy cruiser, via a single torpedo that, shock of shocks, actually hit and detonated, the rest all failed and eventually the subs gave up. The Japanese had not even noticed the US subs, and they'd STILL failed to get more than three hits out of some twenty torpedoes fired! The Japanese even thought the sub torpedo hit was from an aerial torpedo! That was probably as they were too distracted to notice the sub closing to effectively point-blank range before firing its lone still-loaded tube. Then it had to peel off the attack to avoid being rammed by another oblivious Japanese warship.

By the next morning it abruptly became obvious to the SI and US Admirals, Spruance having taken charge from Fletcher when the Yorktown was abandoned, that the Japanese had flown the coop, thinking they had to fight two American carriers and at least four more carriers of SI. In total the Japanese had 3 carriers left near Midway, 60% of their remaining Fleet Carrier strength. Attempted attacks by SI craft at long range produced no substantial results as they only located Kondo's Bombardment Group, sinking three destroyers and wrecking the two heavy cruisers Kondo still had. In the night, a US sub had reported sighting two Mogami-class heavy cruisers but they were nowhere to be seen…

The US aviators would spot the _Mikuma_ and _Mogami_ next, and when the Allies finally peeled off the pursuit as they came within strike range of Wake Island, Spruance vectored all his dive-bombers to the targets. Hannah was, as she said "not willing to risk my aviators' lives over low-value targets, you hired me to take care of the Japanese carriers, remember? We did that just fine in my opinion."

Spruance had to, of course, agree to what all sides found obvious, and his response was "Alright, if you don't want your fliers to get some more live-fire experience…"

"It's alright, your aviators can have at them, it would be good for them to vent their stress and frustration anyways. I need to get back to deal with some of the Atlantic Theatre's troubles, since the contract has already been fulfilled."

Shockingly, the _Mogami_ managed to limp back to Truk Harbour, heavily damaged, despite many attacks from Midway and Spruance alike. Only the _Mikuma_ was sunk by massed dive-bombing. The _Yorktown_ was lost when being towed back to harbour, thanks to a Japanese submarine sent for the purpose, but in the end, Midway was a strategic and tactical total victory for the Allies. The US Navy had lost about 500 men, the SI Pacific Fleet had lost about 80, and the Japanese lost a bit over 6000 men. More importantly, the experienced carrier crews of Japan's main fleet carrier unit were shattered. This was because the other fleet carriers were not as old and thus had less experienced pilots. Once numerical superiority was lost by Japan, it could never be regained, as American war production was orders of magnitude larger than that of Japan. From there, the setting of the Sun was inevitable, but it would not be, at least not yet, quite eternal.

* * *

><p>AN: The last few words are foreshadowing WWV which is the War of the Four Powers (China sat back and laughed at the Japanese for their stupidity).

REVIEW!


	17. A Fallen Shamrock

A/N: Much of this chapter is inspired by parts of the fic "It (Almost) Happened Here" on by Chris Oakley, since I am not going to pretend to understand the Irish social-political situation. I still believe it to be a natural solution for the Germans after being bogged down in southern Britain for nearly half a year. However, expect a much greater hammering of the Germans, a larger split between Wehrmacht and SS, less residual hatred, and definitely an Ireland that's eventually torn about whether or not to align itself with SI. Of course, I will not OP Ireland, little countries without too many natural resources can't sustain gigantic war efforts! Canada at least has a large pool of natural resources to draw on. No offence to Irish people, but it's called being objective/honest, such as saying that "the average inhabitant of Africa has darker skin than the average Scandinavian", not racist, objective.

* * *

><p>Chapter 17: A Fallen Shamrock<p>

_Berlin, January 6, 1943_

Hitler rarely had such strokes of inspiration, but the situation in Britain forced him to it. His troops were being bogged down, BOGGED DOWN of all things by the stalwart British defence lines, and the advance was especially slow with the winter. The U-boat campaign wasn't nearly as successful as he'd hoped because for once the escorts could be fully concentrated in the passage between Ireland and Scilly Anchorage (St. George's Channel) to defend the vital convoys passing through there to Liverpool. With what was left of the Royal Navy's Home Fleet (having been battered by Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine in sequence, though the _Tirpitz_ had to be put in for major repairs after the battle) was holed up at Scapa Flow and Scilly Anchorage. The latter also housed the French GIE fleet of five battleships, three from the First World War, thirteen cruisers and some 29 destroyers. It was a major thorn in his side, but the area was too well defended to attack directly. Hence, he was planning a containment strategy. On the other hand, Britain had to be outflanked if it was to be crushed quickly enough to not allow the US to make too much of a difference with its industrial might, at least, not in time before a suitable peace could be negotiated. To outflank Britain there was at this point one and only one option that the Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht could pull off: Ireland.

* * *

><p><em>Scilly Anchorage, April 6, 1943<em>

Sirens blared loud and clear in the pre-dawn hours and the Royal Navy warships at Scilly along with the entire French GIE Fleet went to high alert as aviators were scrambled en masse. The radar of the islands had picked up large swarms of planes coming from southern Britain to attack them. The attack turned out to be all fighters, for some reason… and there were two more massed fighter sweeps over the next days.

It turned out that the Germans were trying to exhaust or tie up the Scilly Anchorage fliers as news came of a massed German invasion of Ireland. Continuous Luftwaffe attacks on Scilly rendered the base temporarily tied up and unable to launch more than "token" strikes whenever it wasn't occupied fighting off harrying German planes. In the meantime, tens of thousands of Wehrmacht soldiers, well motorized/mechanized, were landing all around Ireland. To the invaders, the airstrikes were hardly token in nature, just because it wasn't 400-plus total sorties a day (less than a fifth of the force present on the islands that formed the Anchorage being sortied was considered "token" by the SI Major General in command of the Anchorage) didn't mean less than 150 bombing sorties were flown per day, each typically carrying a full ton of bombs, with 50-plus fighter sorties as escort, though the bombers hardly required much escorting thanks to manoeuvrability and having a rear gunner.

The Wehrmacht struck into Ireland from multiple beachheads, and by the end of the second week had occupied and/or levelled all of Ireland thoroughly, appointing a puppet dictator and empowering the Nazi Party of Ireland to "do whatever the flying fuck they wanted" to police Ireland. The quote was directly from Himmler, though even he was a bit queasy when informed a few days later as to the mass rapes and massacres the NPI's National Guard was conducting even before he gave them the go-ahead. At the end of the first week, the Irish Government had gone into exile, also at Scilly. The Islands had gone from a bunch of random rocks to, after their territorial ownership was transferred to SI, a great Anchorage, complete with dry-docks and huge underground facilities. It was also a place where nations gathered, and its defences were second to none. Only Scapa Flow had greater numbers of capital ships present.

* * *

><p><em>Halifax, April 15, 1943<em>

It wasn't until April 15 that Hannah was in Halifax worrying over the reports and planning an invasion of Ireland. There was however still a problem: Fifth Division had not entirely completed training yet and if she wanted it to fully finish training she still had to wait a week. There was also the issue of obtaining enough Raider Tanks for the units she would be able to field, since production had mostly been focused on fully supplying Gunter's units and it had taken some time to get the job done. Hence the full Raider Tank complements of the Fourth and Fifth Divisions were expected to take a while to be produced. At a rate of about 350-450 Raider Tanks produced per month plus some more T-1936Cs for export to Britain, it had taken 5 months to supply the North Africa campaign with all the Raider Tanks it needed. Production had begun in late August 1942 so it had taken until mid-February to fill up the approx. 2100-tank strength of the SI North African Corps (accounting for losses). Now, two months later, they had a bit over 900 Raider Tanks ready for the Ireland operation, only enough to fully equip one Division and give a quarter of total tank strength to another. Hannah needed another month before she could be fully ready to launch another massed offensive. Though Britain was literally begging her to help, she could only help by operations from Scilly and keeping Northern Ireland supplied with guns, tanks, food and ammunition while her ships and planes operated constantly to keep the convoy routes to Britain open. She did however promise an offensive before the next spring arrived. The interception of THAT message prompted the Nazis to focus on clearing Ireland of "undesirables" instead of turning the region into a fortress immediately, as they knew that Hannah usually kept her word. Japan had neglected to tell her ally of the misinformation (Kyoto vs. Tokyo) that resulted in such horrendous loss of face, and it was this, among other things, that prompted yet another ensuing massacre.

Every day, more Irish Jews, intellectuals and other "undesirables" were executed en masse at the concentration camps set up throughout Ireland. Mostly they were an assembly-line style operation in that male inmates did not even require feeding, only to be herded out to be machine-gunned. As for female inmates, they were used as sexual toys by the Blueshirts, the INP's police force, until the guards got tired of them, and then they were usually hung out to die of exposure (usually with their bellies sliced open and strung up on barbed wire). Reports of horrors witnessed by partisan espionage missions, suppressed in the US because the US was mostly focusing on Japan (It was still feeding a lot of supplies and weapons to Britain though) but amplified in Canada and the British Isles brought this scarcely believable news. The result was that recruitment of Sixth Division went much faster than the previous ones, since there were so many volunteers, despite SI being essentially mercenary in nature. The news also prompted Hannah Shepard to use the loophole she made for herself in the Code of Conduct when she and Jane composed it.

It was May the Fifth when the radio broadcast to all SI Armed Forces went out. A quarter of a world away Gunter von Esling was at the same time (adjusted for time zones) broadcasting the recorded tape of his General's speech. "To all Shepard Industries Armed Forces, this is your General, Hannah Shepard, speaking. You have no doubt received the news reports of the horrors occurring throughout Ireland and the rabid animalistic behaviour of the Irish Nazis, along with the German SS, Gestapo, and SA units." Wicklow had been murdered and raped to the ground, all the adolescents had been shipped off as slave labour and all the younger children had been shot or bayoneted. Then the buildings had been demolished and burnt to ashes, before being run over repeatedly by German tanks. The SS Panzer Division responsible had set up a perimeter of tanks around the town so that no one escaped and the only evidence of it was the films the puppet government was playing to scare the rest of the populace into submission. It seemed to be working somewhat as more and more partisans were killed by aggressive German hunting. "They will pay for this. To this end, Extermination Order Number One has been authorized for an indefinite duration of time. All units when fighting SS, Gestapo, SA or other secret police units will be by default at DEFCON 1 and enforce this Order." DEFCON 1 meant selective Extermination Orders against armed enemy units could be carried out. "The order specifies that all secret police units and any other units absolutely confirmed to have killed and/or raped large numbers of civilians are to be killed on sight and surrenders are not to be accepted regardless of conditions. However, regular enemy units must still be treated as per the usual guidelines of the Code of Conduct. This order is to be followed in all subsequent engagements against these sub-human units without exception. However, every possible use of the enemy itself to accomplish this objective may be used." Messages had been sent to all commanders about the use of pamphlets and propaganda against enemy units, such as "Anyone who stays with an SS unit will be killed. If you want to live, leave them to fend for themselves or kill them, then we will accept your surrender and protect you from partisans who may wish to kill you."

Hannah knew it might sound a bit Nazi to term such units "Sub-human" but they deserved it, and the morale reports from the CINCLANT (Gunter), CINCHOME (Jane) and CINCPAC (currently her deputy in the role, Rear Admiral Williams) were all positive. Hence she wasn't too worried as she prepared for war again. The economic situation was going well, the war wasn't costing Canada beyond what it could afford, and she was still making a profit off business. After all, renting passage on her convoys was still less risky than sending merchant ships even in convoy nowadays. This was because most convoys were slower than a surfaced U-boat, and hers were decidedly NOT. Hence it was hard to intercept them simply as they'd outrun the U-boats before long, and ambush attempts tended not to go well with newer radar sets and anti-sub patrol planes, plus sheer speed and coordinated manoeuvring to avoid torpedoes (they had more rudders than was typical, which meant they turned tighter than typical).

Her company was growing, if slowly, into a world power as had been her dream since she was but a child. She wanted to be one of the movers and shakers of the world, leader of a world power, but she didn't want to take over the world. She was realistic, and understood that at least one other roughly equivalent faction would be required to keep her faction stable in the long run. So here she was, building her way up via a PMC to become one of the Great Powers, she was beginning to live her dream, and she loved it.

It was true that relations with America were going downhill, since Congress wasn't too happy about Nimitz hiring her units to do some work (although he'd got away with it by explaining the necessity) and the Chiefs of Staff had shifted money toward R&D. Maybe she'd performed a bit too well at Tokyo and Midway and they were feeling threatened, hence there seemed to be a subtle propaganda campaign against hiring her forces again percolating through the US at the moment. It did not matter, since the whole point of a PMC was not to be hired by large powers, but instead be able to get good contracts from lesser powers who could not afford otherwise to employ heavy hardware such as massed armour or aircraft carriers. The US were racing to develop a better fighter, well, she didn't mind, it wasn't like the US would hire its military forces out, so it wasn't competition other than for her own R&D department, and that was good for their souls. Competition bred progress after all, and she needed to be more progressive than others if she wanted to keep her Private Military Company afloat.

As for the Congress opposing her, she could understand, since hiring her was no longer absolutely strategically critical. At the time of Midway, the Japanese had ten Fleet Carriers and a handful of Light Carriers, the US Navy had four Fleet Carriers battle-ready in the Pacific, so it had been strategically mandatory to get additional forces from wherever possible. Her planes in fully-loaded bomber (level/dive or torpedo) configurations couldn't really stack up to enemy fighters but their bomber equipment (rear turret, dive brakes, etc.) made them superior fighters when not carrying bombs or torpedoes. Hence it had been both strategically AND tactically expedient to hire her as the US Pacific Fleet simply could not match the occasion at the time. Certainly, the Americans could have disabled or sunk at least four Japanese carriers, but they would likely have lost two of their own, and the US Navy Pacific Fleet couldn't afford that, as they'd started their war preparation construction programme too late. Hannah figured that was why they'd hired her in the first place, to ensure the Japanese carrier forces were hit hard enough to set them back. It was however irritating to read intel reports forwarded to her CINCPAC HQ about Guadalcanal and not get a request or contract offer just because it was no longer strategically mandatory.

* * *

><p><em>Scilly Anchorage, May 20, 1943<em>

The Irish Parliament, evacuated to the Scilly Anchorage, watched with trepidation and growing hope as the great fleet departed the Anchorage in the dawn. Two by two the Royal Navy detachment in the Anchorage, submitted to SI command when no orders came from the British War Cabinet, and the French Government-In-Exile Fleet was sailing in company with them, they weren't certain just what was happening, but something was. So it was that the Irish Parliament watched the great fleet depart solemnly, steaming away from the rising sun, carrying all of Ireland's hopes and dreams with it as it sallied forth to do battle once more.

* * *

><p><em>Ireland, May 20, 1943<em>

_Several hours previous…_

There were a few things the Germans, or anyone, would not expect for an amphibious landing:

Item 1: Landing an assault force on a golf course

Item 2: Landing an assault force on a beach with a slope steeper than 15 degrees to the horizontal

Item 3: Large freighters with only 3-4 meters draught when essentially empty conducting the landings via large boarding ramps.

Item 4: Amphibious Tanks able to snorkel in up to 7 meters of water safely (and using periscopes to look around underwater) by design being standard-issue

Item 5: A large fleet of nimble, small ships able to engage E-boats with absurd success being available

Item 6: Landings beginning at 2 AM, three hours before first light

All of these factors and more piled up into a disastrous situation for the Germans. The Fast-Attack boat load of the Corvettes, usually 2 boats per Corvette, had been omitted in favour of ten Raider Tanks in the rear with the standard Boat Boarding Ramp, which helped boats get in, at four meters long, repurposed for unloading tanks onto the seabed. The Corvettes were so shallow-draught that they were able to essentially extend their ramps onto the seabed before unloading. The Frigates on the other hand could not do this, so they kept their Attack Boats, which were deployed to help the Corvettes duel it out with German E-boats by virtue of having armour plating unlike their opponents and dual 40mm cannons able to shred the E-boats with high-explosive rounds. The same guns could also act as anti-aircraft guns, which they usually were used as on bigger ships.

As for U-boat threats, the patrol planes, Attack Boats, and the shallow water precluded their effective use. This was as any conning tower located by radar was lit up by turret-mounted searchlight and was soon hit with, usually, a pair of 100mm APHE shells from a corvette or a single 200mm round from a Frigate. That usually meant a sunken submarine. The Germans were caught totally off-guard during the darkest part of the night as the rumbling of tanks and splashing of water sliding in sheets off armour announced the Raider Tanks tearing their way up onto the beachhead. As soon as they detected movement in the night from German outposts, their machine-guns lit up, followed by the bellowing of 95mm cannons firing standard APHE shells, the all-purpose shell type issued in larger numbers than any other shell type in the SI military.

There were two beachheads on Irish soil, near Galway and Drogheda respectively, and considering the island was only 200 kilometres across her 20000 soldiers on each side could easily cut across if need be thanks to their mobility. However, Hannah had the not-so-obvious in mind. Instead, her forces would rampage north to smash the core of the German forces bogged down at the Northern Ireland Defence Line before swinging south to smash through the Germans and National Guard units of the puppet government. The Northern Ireland Defence Line stretched from Downpatrick to Monaghan to the Lough Erne Line, which reached all the way to Donegal Bay on the west coast of Ireland. It had held the Nazis for some time now, and was being worn ragged. Absolutely confirmed reports were obtained from locals about Eoin O'Duffy and his National Guard's odious behaviour, including Blueshirt-committed mass rapes and killings of perceived enemies of the New Order. They only affirmed Hannah's decision that that man would be personally killed by her and no one else, and that his execution would eventually be broadcast worldwide just as she had planned for Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito.

Fourth Division on the west coast was the unit under Hannah's direct command, and it tore west, leaving only its Mechanized and Aviation Brigades to hold the line at Galway against projected Axis counterattacks. Within a single day the western Irish coast was secure up to Sligo even while Fourth Mechanized was duelling it out with no fewer than two Brigade-strength German units backed by three battalions of National Guard soldiers. The Tiger tank proved to be no real match for the kill-power of the mighty 95mm long-barrelled gun (firing HEAT rounds) and thick ceramic-sandwiched armour of its opponent and the screeching dive-bomber attacks. Hence the German attack was beaten back by sheer weight of firepower. Though SI displayed a distinct shortage of infantry, its units were always equipped with far more than adequate numbers of armoured vehicles and supply vehicles for running battles.

APCs were typically counted as half a truck each in terms of supply, hence despite only Motorized Infantry having hundreds of trucks at their disposal the other Brigades were still well equipped with supply capability. In large operations, independently operating Logistics Brigades typically handled the supply lines and garrison duty. Here, in Ireland, there was no need for that as the two Divisions operating in the country tore into the German units at the NIDL from the rear. According to the reports Kesselring was getting, they were "a gigantic swarm of tanks and armour as far as the eye can see thundering down on our heads, firing on the move and demolishing our units like they weren't there."

This made the German CINC-Ireland understandably very worried. Hence the man quickly ordered for a defence line to be set up between Lough Ree and Dublin in an effort to at least delay the armoured rampage and buy some time for better units to be shipped to him. The move would buy some time alright, but it was hardly the sort of time Kesselring was hoping for, or at least, not in an amount he could want… If the reports of amphibious tanks were correct he also had to watch the Shannon River…

* * *

><p><em>St. George's Channel, May 21, 1943<em>

The mighty fleet of eleven assorted battleships, twenty-three cruisers, 29 destroyers and a handful of subs from various countries (including two Polish submarines and a destroyer) waited about thirty kilometres west of Scilly Anchorage. They were ready to ambush the German fleet which would no doubt sortie to fight the invasion fleets attacking Ireland. Astonishingly, no German fleet manifested for the next week, and at the end of the week the great battle fleet went home disappointed but also relieved, as the Battle of Ireland was tipping so far that the invasion fleets were no longer occupying the beachhead areas, but instead mostly moved to the North Channel in such a concentration of carriers and warships that they were effectively immune to all but submarine attack. Even then, subs would have a hard time getting through all the escorts, and skirt armour combined with manoeuvrability dealt with the vast majority of torpedoes fired, not that there were many.

* * *

><p><em>Ireland, May 26, 1943<em>

The Wehrmacht units in front of the NIDL had been worn down from 6 divisions of 130,000 men total in two Corps-class units to 40,000 men in a closed pocket over four days of desperate combat against an armoured juggernaut of a foe. That was before the Wehrmacht units' remaining officers decided enough was enough and that dying in their shrinking pocket south of the Upper Lough Erne wasn't worth it. Their supplies were nearly gone, their only fresh water was from the lake, and many were wounded or had fallen ill from the constant rain soaking them to the bone. Their surrender message was met with "Do you have any SS or National Guard units with you?"

The Brigadier who was the senior officer surviving replied with "Yes." There were only a handful of them left but there were some.

The response he got was "Dispose of them, or hand them over. Otherwise, we will unfortunately have to ensure their extermination by… Well, you don't want the consequences to happen to your men. I can offer you and your regular Wehrmacht soldiers very good surrender terms, but SS, SA and National Guard units will need to be eliminated beforehand."

Needless to say, the Brigadier refused and ordered his men to forage as well as they could while holding out for air-dropped supplies. His opponent didn't push him, Hannah merely left a Motorized Brigade and an Assault Armour Battalion near the pocket to help contain it while her main army thundered their way southward. The Wehrmacht had been pulling soldiers back over the Shannon River and around the tip of said river while she was pounding the units on the NIDL, especially the National Guard and SS units, into pulp. She'd let them go, as it would merely make the fight for the part of Ireland between Galway and the Shannon easier. British and Irish troops from the NIDL (much of the Irish Army had retreated there and joined the line), though mostly poorly-trained militia, were mostly put to work actually reclaiming the turf east of Galway that the Germans had abandoned. Fourth Division, what remained of its strength, a mere Motorized Brigade plus three-quarters of the Assault Armour Brigade (up-tanked Light Tank Brigade), provided all the heavy firepower needed to clear out the remaining German and National Guard units. Most of the former surrendered to be given protection from partisans and to be shipped back to Canada to POW camps. The latter fought like rabid animals and were put down by the thundering of 40, 60, 95 and 100mm shells, 7.5mm rifle bullets, 10mm SMG rounds, 12.5mm machine-gun fire and all sorts of bombs, grenades, etc. SS and National Guard surrender attempts were ignored while Wehrmacht ones were accepted. One Colonel actually shot the National Guard men in his group so that the rest could be saved, two weeks after they were surrounded in the same pocket. To quote him as he said, while getting food in the food line his captors had set up for the newly minted POWs (much to the irritation of the British and Irish) "I always hated those murderers and rapists… it felt good shooting some of them, I wish I could sign up in your army for the duration of the Irish campaign…" Needless to say, he was not accepted and was only joking, however, it was true that in subsequent wars large numbers of former POWs signed up with SI's armies.

Then only problem with the Battle of Ireland, as the Wehrmacht was pushed back further and further, was Dublin. Hannah was for blasting her way through the city, levelling anything in her way if need be, whereas the British and Irish commanders were both protesting the idea and wanted to preserve the city. Hence, she decided that the operation would be led by their troops with her units providing only air support. After all, the RAF was, what was left of it, busy with the Battle FOR Britain (the aerial battles of 1940 were collectivized as the Battle OF Britain).

Fourth Division was stopped by the Shannon as the Wehrmacht had fortified the opposing bank carefully, so Hannah ordered them to loop around the head of the river. The entire unit made a detour to Galway to pick up more fuel from the depot established there by Fourth Aviation, assigned to supply guard duty as well as air support. Ireland was a small country and so the Aviation Brigades also served logistics duty while being based near the landing beaches. Fifth Mechanized and Fifth Aviation on the east coast had held the Germans for over half a week as the main Wehrmacht forces on the NIDL were smashed, and the two units were finally relieved from their dogged defence of the Drogheda beachhead on May 27 as the rest of their Division returned to smash past their enemy's west flank before turning to crush the Germans and National Guard units into the sea.

Surrendering Wehrmacht soldiers were given food, water and blankets, which would be re-cycled back to the trucks they came from once the men were securely en route to POW camps. However, the Wehrmacht troops were also treated to the sight of the handful of captured SS men and National Guardsmen being executed by firing squad even while the Wehrmacht troops stood in the food lines. None of the Wehrmacht men did anything, partly because before each execution a list of crimes would be read over a loudspeaker by the supervisor of the execution to justify the purge. Surprisingly most of the Wehrmacht soldiers before the first executions actually agreed that the charges rang true and that the SS men should be at least lynched, though they stopped agreeing after seeing the SS men get shot. Their cooperation was also partly because there were several APCs hanging around and armed soldiers watching them. It was also rather obvious that the British and Irish troops were only being held back from lynching ALL the Germans by the perimeter of SI men and women plus armoured vehicles. The Wehrmacht soldiers were thus actually thankful about surrendering to SI…

The prisoners were finally piled into the back of trucks headed for Belfast, with several guards per truck watching a good twenty prisoners crammed into the back. The guards were sort of (ahem) "apologetic" about the situation, during the travel arrangements announcement they told the prisoners "Sorry we have to do this, but we don't want you guys to get beaten to soup by those very angry men out there." That was obviously intimidation, but the hateful looks the Wehrmacht men were getting convinced them it was best to be quiet and listen to their captors, after all, they were being treated fairly well, better than they could expect from anyone else.

It took some time for all the prisoners to all be secured onto a convoy of ships waiting in Belfast harbour for the express purpose. That was because the Brigadier trapped south of the NIDL had finally surrendered on May 31, and it took a while to pack so many men into ships, even with the thousands of British and Irish guards (with SI supervisors to ensure fair treatment) loaded onboard to watch the prisoners. Said prisoners were confined to their rooms for the 5-day journey (bars were put across doors for this) and delivered food and water regularly by their guards. It had taken a speech on how the Allies had to be better than their enemy to convince the Brits and Irish to be so nice.

Regardless, the soldiers were finally all taken to Canada for internment. After all, the Territorial Defence Force, those Canadians unwilling to sign up with SI, needed to be put to work, and watching prisoners was a good way to do that, though they were still required by Canadian Military Law to obey the SI Code of Conduct. Of course, they were not to obey Extermination Orders (Hannah had told King of her concerns of violence against prisoners with the EOs that she would issue) even when SI was at DEFCON 1.

With Dublin isolated and besieged by British and Irish forces grinding their way into the suburbs, Dr. Franz Six in Cork began to wonder just how long his regime would last. So he ordered the acceleration of the execution of the Jews, Irish intellectuals, and clergy members at the concentration camps, especially those closer to the front line. He also ordered O'Duffy to work harder at purging the undesirables from the country before the land was overrun completely, relieved that the purge had started from the NIDL and progressed south, hence it was nearly complete.

The orders led to the first examples of mass defections of Wehrmacht soldiers. Several whole battalions refused orders and tore down their flags in defiance when ordered by O'Duffy, who was technically their superior as long as Kesselring didn't disagree, to participate in the mass killings of unarmed civilians. Then the aforementioned Wehrmacht units annihilated the National Guard and/or SS units accompanying them and surrendered to the SI forces via way of radio transmissions and flying white flags. Their Brigade commanders, upon hearing of this, simply stated "What did you expect?" to O'Duffy in response to his angry radio calls, and did nothing to try to get their men back. This occurred at Clara, Kildare, and Naas, along with several other cities near the border. Further south, however, Wehrmacht soldiers were not even ordered to participate, and were told to leave the area of soon-to-be purges as a precaution against further mutinies.

When Hitler caught wind of this, he was furious and ordered the Brigade commanders arrested and court-martialled, but by the time the SS men could possibly get there it was too late, the cities in question had already been overrun. Despite putting up a good fight the Germans surrendered to the SI units in the end, knowing that they would be treated better than the British or Irish would treat them. Hannah on the other hand was elated at the German mass defections, despite her own forces' mounting casualties. Even with their very practical training (focusing on useful things such as slit trench excavation, weapon maintenance, and moving efficiently and stealthily through urban rubble or underbrush as opposed to saluting and marching in rank and column) they still lacked the combat experience First through Third divisions had, and it was showing. Despite the kill-to-loss ratio still being a solid 50 to 1 it was nowhere near the 150-to-one kill-to-loss ratio her veterans could pull on a good day. Well, they would get better with time, morale was extremely high with the success they'd enjoyed so far, and available reinforcements were more than keeping up with losses.

* * *

><p><em>Ireland, May 30, 1943<em>

Morale grew even higher with the discovery of the concentration camps on the 30th of May, well, it was more of a "we will fight to the death to kill all actual Nazis" sentiment. Hannah personally visited one of the death camps and ran a hand over a wall covered with pockmarks from bullets and blood splatter patterns several hours after it was secured. She then inspected the rest of the camp, and by the time she came back out had already decided a few things that would be broadcast in the clear on BBC's news channel, having nabbed a transmitter from the news crew following her around (though they were instructed not to reveal locations or they would be shot for leaking intelligence). Then she stared at the bodies strung up on the barbed wire around the facility for quite some time as she made her radio speech.

It started with "To all listeners, this is General Hannah Shepard of Shepard Industries, today, May the Thirtieth of Nineteen-Forty-Three, a Nazi death camp was overrun in Ireland, video footage should be on television shortly. First I must inform you that Doctor Franz Six, leader of the Nazi puppet government in Ireland, will be punished for the execution of an estimated 40,000 people at this camp alone and no doubt other camps, and that Eoin O'Duffy will be personally killed by myself and that his corpse will be desecrated, much as as his existence desecrates the Earth. Doctor Six, Mr. O'Duffy, are you listening? You will remember my words, remember them tonight, remember them in the morning, and remember them when you sleep, you will not wake more than thrice again, mark my words, Six, O'Duffy…"

Then she switched over to the Supreme Command Channel and ordered the execution of the operation that she'd drawn up that morning and distributed to unit commanders. "Commence Operation: Devil's Snare, I repeat, commence Operation: Devil's Snare. Authorization code Delta-Six-Bear-Trap."She didn't use the same code length (in words) for everything, so as to throw enemies off. After that she grabbed the film camera from the BBC personnel and started filming, hitting start pointed toward the front gate of the death camp and walking along, the BBC truck following slowly and wire crews reeling out the wire. So it was that she narrated the world's first video of the true horror of Nazism and explained to a horrified world why they were fighting. She highlighted the efforts across the world against the Axis by SI in passing, and the result, as would be shown later, was another wave of volunteers for recruitment. She didn't film the one-shot mass execution of the camp guards via a 95mm shell fired in defilade (the _animals_ were all lined up in a column and the shell fired at them from behind), but after reviewing the mass media response, she wondered if it would only have boosted her public support.

However, for now, it was unimportant, what was important was what Operation: Devil's Snare meant: The ruins of Wicklow were passed by most of Fifth Division, which had gone over the Wicklow Mountains and now ploughed south to Wexford, and Limerick was taken by Fourth Division and its carried Allied troops by the 31st. The advance toward Tipperary seemed to stop, but ten men from her personal MP group were sent toward Cork in a captured German Opel 3-ton truck. While the Germans and National Guard were thoroughly occupied by attacks on all other fronts, the truck was hidden outside Cork and the men, dressed as Wehrmacht soldiers, smuggled themselves into the city early on the First of June.

Two days and a lot of smuggling, near-discoveries and near-accidents later the dishevelled but elated men were back safely behind SI lines with the tied-up Franz Six and Eoin O-Duffy, force-fed water and food to keep them alive and with all their molars yanked out to avoid potential cyanide pills. Of course, the "behind SI lines" part was as Fourth Division had split again and taken Tipperary and Tralee at the same time, throwing the Wehrmacht off as best they could since Fifth Division was wreaking havoc in New Ross, Waterford and Clonmel. These were the sites of several major engagements, all of which were won through overwhelming firepower, air support, mobility, range and protection in combination with good tactics and communications. Fourth Division's main body (the Assault Armour and one of the Motorized Brigades) then cut west through Mallow and looped southwest to Bandon while the puppet government was in utter chaos. SI soldiers overran several more concentration camps, but they didn't manage to save any prisoners, the last ones having been shot or mortally wounded by the guards' grenades even as the perimeter of the camp fell. Every concentration camp guard was shot, usually after a bayonet to the crotch and then tearing his dick/balls off in a single stroke. This was as the (furious) SI soldiers were allowed to do ANYTHING under Extermination Order Number Two to concentration camp guards, and they figured firing a tank shell in defilade was too painless a way to kill the _animals_.

Doctor Franz Six and Eoin O'Duffy were put up before the cameras on June the Second in a freshly overrun concentration camp, the corpses of women who had been used as sex toys and then shot by the guards and strung up on the barbed wire still dripping blood slowly onto the ground. This was while Cork was under siege and Killarney was being fought for house to house by British and Irish units against the Germans. Their charges were read to them by Hannah herself, though she kept the camera pointed at her from the side so that the dead women were obviously visible in the background. She would save the recording for later to be broadcast as part of the victory celebrations when the campaign ended along with the executions of the other Axis leaders one by one by her hand when their campaigns ended. "You, Doctor Franz Six, and You, Eoin O'Duffy, are hereby accused of crimes against sentience and the mass killings of at least 150,000 people, plus the mass rapes of at least 100,000 women in Ireland over the past month and a half. The verdict has been passed and the proof is irrefutable. Do you have any last words?" She stripped the duct tape off Six's mouth.

After a yowl of pain "Nazism is the only defence against Communism, you must understand this!" Six was silenced when the tape was re-applied over his mouth.

"That was to stop that bullshit, O'Duffy, do you want to say anything?" The other man nodded, and gave a yelp of pain when she tore the tape from his mouth along with the top layer of his epidermis.

"I wish that you were one of the inmates at one of the concentration camps. Then my men would have had some fun toying with you, bitch." O'Duffy tried to spit at Hannah only to have the spit plastered back onto his face when his mouth was taped shut again.

"You two are both sentenced to death by a manner listed in the SI Code of Conduct Second Edition for dealing with rapists or those who ordered mass rapes and/or murders." Hannah grabbed the bayonets she always had in thigh sheaths and sliced the clothes of the two men off before pushing a trembling Franz Six onto a wooden plank, forcing him to lay flat by way of her troops levelling guns at his cuffed form, their eyes burning with vengeance for all the pain he had caused. This, and the slam of the bayonets into the table through the man's testicles, was recorded on camera, and so was the man's wild thrashing as his initial jerk of pain tore his balls off. A swift kick from Hannah winded the man enough for her to jerk the bayonets off the table and plunge them down through the man's dick, ripping it too off with a spray of crimson blood. Then she looked at the now unconscious (from sheer pain) man for a brief moment before kicking him over onto his back and slicing his pants open to show the camera. "He shit himself, well, that's it for him for now."

Then she picked her bayonet, still with the man's right nut stuck onto it, and turned toward O'Duffy after kicking the Doctor's unconscious form off the plank. When he struggled against her one-handed grip on his collar to throw him onto the board, she drove her blades into his gut and sliced across, spilling his intestines all over the ground before hurling the man down and slamming her bayonets home into his crotch. After a sharp tearing motion she plunged both through his dick and ripped it in half while it was still attached to him, and with the man's pants already ripped by her initial plunges it was clear to the camera as he soiled himself, making a silent scream of pain with his mouth taped shut before slumping down, half-fainted form pain. Hannah stabbed her bayonets into the plank and picking up the two beasts, dragging them, and with the camera following, to the barbed wire blanket on the ground, with the foul entrails of Eoin O'Duffy trailing along the ground. "We shall rake them over the same barbed wire that, under their orders, women used as sexual toys by the concentration camp guards were strung up on to die and rot." She told the camera before tying a rope attached to a steel cable around each man's torso, then running it over to a Raider Tank on the other side of the field, before giving the signal for the men to "JUST DRIVE!" as she bellowed at them. The soldiers who had drawn the best lots out of all the Irish members of her two divisions were only too happy to comply.

Two new blood streaks were added to the barbed wire that day, and finally the two foul chunks of meat were torn off the barbed wire, having bled to death, and shot a few more times to make sure they were dead before being thrown onto the road to be run over by another Raider Tank. The Irishmen/women in the two SI Divisions had literally had to draw straws to see which eight would have the honour of the two duties (dragging over the barbed wire and first to run them over), and so here they were. Then the rest of Fourth and Fifth Divisions rolled over the area in a rough formation. By the time they had thundered away from the concentration camp, Hannah boarding one of the APCs after giving her final speech to the camera and stopping the recording, it was just a big dirt path with nothing left to say that corpses had been there a while ago.

The final stand of the Germans was at Dungarvan, the same place where the Battle of Ireland started nearly two months ago. They fought ferociously as they tried to buy time for evacuation convoys to reach them, but the Scilly Armada (as it was informally called) was, with heavy air support, wreaking absolute havoc on the convoys, and the Germans did not dare disperse their comparatively small surface fleet to try to guard all the convoy runs. After a while, even the escorted runs ceased as more and more surface ships were damaged by aerial attacks, the blockade against U-boats and the like smuggling men out was finally closed for good. By June the Eleventh, the remaining Wehrmacht units in Ireland had surrendered, however, spirited response was still being offered by the same SS Panzer Division that had massacred Wicklow. They were in the fields north of Cork where they had been encircled and trapped by British and Irish troops who were grinding them to dust. However, when Hannah got the report that the unit had been positively identified, she sent a message to the British and Irish that she would get the job done and be a lot more vicious about it.

What ensued was a 16-hour artillery bombardment as Hannah had extra shells shipped in just for this purpose. Her howitzers had a full-accuracy life expectancy of 5,000 full-charge firings, but at a rate of 5 shots a minute for low-intensity (to let the guns run with less crew to give the men rest) sustained fire, that expectancy only meant 1000 minutes, or 16 hours and 40 minutes, of continuous firing before the barrel needed to be re-bored or accuracy would begin to decline. At 7500 rounds a barrel was by regulations no longer usable unless it was heated to de-stress the metal as a safety precaution. The crews were told to stop as soon as their first barrel wore out. The fire slackened and soon ceased, and an eerie silence settled over the giant sea of craters that was the target. The few SS survivors peeked tentatively out of foxholes in hope that the continuous bombardment had ended. Their hope was answered in the form of a wall of metal and… dirt… coming toward them.

It was an awesome… and awesomely smelly sight to see Raider Tanks spaced just far enough apart for their plough-deposit zones to overlap, burying anyone not in their path alive. The dozer blades sheared through the foxholes—and the men in the foxholes—as the tanks rolled through the area at a relatively slow but still adequate rate. The SS men trying to run away were mown down as per Extermination Order Number One, and within an hour the pocket was no more. The only question was from de Valera, the Irish Prime Minister, as he surveyed the ploughed-over field "Wouldn't it have been more efficient to shell them for a couple hours only before going in?"

"Well, it's more torturous to be subjected to 16 hours of non-stop shelling at a rate of…" she crunched the numbers for a moment "77760 shells, sustained, per hour from 216 guns. Besides, don't you think those SS animals deserved it for Wicklow? We also needed to make sure they had NO heavy hardware left. A defeat is so much more embarrassing if the kill-to-loss ratio for us is undefined, as in zero losses." Needless to say, as this conversation was being broadcast live to the Allied Nations, it won approval from almost all viewers. "Well, I got you your country back, Mr. de Valera, if you ever want to hire my services again, feel free to contact us, we'll do our utmost to give you a reasonable deal, and for the record, this campaign, the Battle of Ireland, is for free. You don't need to pay us anything."

That just made sure that, since Ireland was a small country and couldn't field a large military, she would get plenty of good business from it in the future. Being generous had its upsides, in that others were likely to be more generous when offering you contracts.

* * *

><p><em>Ireland, June 30, 1943<em>

Hannah frowned deeply "Another HOW MANY?"

"Seventeen more women were found dead this morning, most seemed to be suicides in nature." The man, the Minister of Public Security, told her.

"And the suicide notes?"

"The same sort of content as last time." That basically meant the women had been ostracized for being suspected of romantic relationships with Germans, even though the opinion toward Germans was not hideous. This was thanks to the efforts of many Wehrmacht men during the occupation to protect the civilians from the SS, and a number of them had even died doing so. Hence the German-hating wasn't as extreme as it could have been, but… "The surviving Catholic clergy is still condemning them for suicide, which they consider a mortal sin. The surviving Archbishop is endorsing their condemnation."

Hannah's vision seemed to tunnel for a brief moment, she REALLY should not have saved the old twat form the last concentration camp in Ireland when she overran it, the Wehrmacht guards had killed the SS men present and released the prisoners willingly, hence they were treated as regular POWs. Even with the Extermination Order against concentration camp guards, her men were smart enough to distinguish those who deserve it and those who didn't. "Hold on a minute, I'll deal with the situation right away, when's the next meeting they're going to have?"

"They should be having one on July the Fifteenth."

"Alright… that gives me enough time." Normally she wouldn't give a flying fuck but to condemn someone for trying to get away from your condemnation for something they (in most cases) didn't do struck her as more Satanic behaviour than religious, hence, well, accidents can happen.

So began the first Black Ops operation of Sheppard Industries' career, as the Six and O'Duffy executions had been broadcast to an overwhelmingly positive reception from the Irish, British, Canadian and American governments. Actually, the footage wasn't played directly, it was filming a room of Wehrmacht POWs reacting positively to the footage that was played, to magnify the effect. The POWs had responded positively, since the Wehrmacht hated the SS and collaborators in general, which was as they were paid so much more than Wehrmacht soldiers and had lower-risk operations most of the time. It wasn't like the relationship between SI's regular troops and officers/MPs. The MP stood for Multi-Purpose soldier, and was probably the most stressful line of work in the SI arsenal. The regulars didn't envy them much despite their higher pay, which said something about how stressful their work could be. The MP's life involved operating/maintaining assorted vehicles/equipment like the men, operating artillery pieces, guarding commanding officers, and classified operations such as the one that had snatched Doctor Six and O'Duffy. The officers had to do all the paperwork, and that wasn't fun either by the opinions of the men, hence though the grunts aspired to MP/non-com and then officer positions, they weren't nearly as spiteful about it as in many other militaries.

As for Stage One of Operation: Divine Intervention, via anonymous notes to newspaper offices and brochures and such dispersed from aircraft over population centres, it didn't take long to shut the clergy up. They were hardly liked nowadays, as they had advocated turning the other cheek during the invasion (for survival's sake), right up until they were rounded up. Most were dead and the rest were in disarray, so the last meeting, on June the Twentieth, was mostly to get things in order again, and they were already busy condemning people for this and that. Well, the world shall see how well they'll do with blunt evidence of their collaboration with the Nazis flung into the faces of the public.

Hannah waited a week before putting the second stage of Operation: Divine Intervention into effect. The first stage had gone well and public opinion—oh the sheep-people… her last name was very appropriate—had already shifted toward condemning the holier-than-thou condemners. The second stage started with arranging a fleet shore bombardment exercise using an open field two kilometres north of the building the meeting was to be held in, with target areas designated by plough work of Raider Tanks. It had been some time since the Fleet had done a sail-by shooting at maximum straight-line speed (about 45 knots) and the rationale was that she was worried they were getting out of practice. As for the coordinates, she purposefully made a mistake in the number of kilometres north of Dublin's borders. Hence Stage Three went into motion as all the Destroyers of the Atlantic Mobile Fleet prepared for the exercise.

* * *

><p>AN: As you can tell I strongly dislike clergy condemning this that and the other thing (if your life is devoted to religion you should do introspections more than you leer at everyone else, right?), and a lot of Irish people actually dislike much of the clergy. I know quite a number of Irish personally and when asked 94% i.e. 17 of 18 said they really didn't like a lot of the clergy, hence I have public approval to go ahead. Therefore… most of the more accusing elements will be eliminated and quieter voices will prevail.

* * *

><p><em>Ireland, July 15, 1943<em>

The next clergy meeting was centered on how badly things were falling apart around them and how they needed to patch things up in a more organized effort instead of the work they were doing in their respective areas right now. The ones present, the more conservative, obstinate ones, still hadn't recognized their biggest error—condemning fraternization with the Germans while condemning suicides for that at the same time—when the building, just north of Dublin's suburbs, literally fell apart around them…

Some distance away Hannah blinked in false surprise as she listened to the report "Third volley fired at… Where?"

The captain of the Destroyer that was doing gunnery practice rattled off a bunch of coordinates "as per orders Ma'am."

Hannah looked on the map grid and the coordinates in question "Oops…" she said quietly. "Uh, I think there was a typo somewhere, it's supposed to be two grids north of that that's the gunnery range."

There was silence on the line for a moment "so what exactly did we shoot at."

"I think you blew up the building that the Catholic clergy was holding their meeting in."

The man, who was an Irish Catholic but disliked the clergy (hence one of the reasons why he'd moved to Canada) snorted "Oh, well that's alright I guess, nothing really important got blown up."

"True, but we'll still need to apologize publicly for the accident." Hannah had ensured that all of the quieter clergy members along with a few snooty ones (to avoid suspicion) had been blockaded from reaching the area by various means. Since Ireland was so small, few planned on arriving before the previous night, and she took full advantage of that. The slow-downs included fake traffic accidents, flooded roads from damaged dams "finally giving way" in a time when there was no traffic, search-and-destroy missions for suspected mines planted on railway tracks, and searching passengers on trains/planes for escaping undercover Germans or spies. Those were explained to the public the next morning as a result of having captured a couple hold-out German troops and because any sneaky people would have probably tried to merge into the public, and it was just a spike in activity after the past several weeks of surveying, reorganizing the country, population census, etc. Hence it didn't attract many conspiracy theorists.

As for the slowdowns themselves, they ranged from the everyday to the utterly hilarious. In one case it took some effort to prop a Raider Tank against the side of another, plus a few civilian car wrecks towed to the area, to fake a pile-up of civilian and SI vehicles. In another case, a remote-controlled mine had been detonated on a bridge surface when no one was nearby, and the shaped explosion, though not damaging the bridge more than a small crater in the road surface thanks to being directed upward, prompted enough police calls that the area was cordoned off and an SI demolitions team called in to inspect the whole bridge for more bombs. Unfortunately they would take some time to finish, and so the people waiting were asked to go home and wait until the next morning except for truly urgent business such as rushing people to hospitals. The river had only that bridge left standing in the vicinity, so the emergency cases were transferred across the river by APCs snorkelling across the river bottom. There they were taken away by the "shuttle bus" service—an SI 5-ton truck was on station, and typically a second one arrived 10 minutes after the first one (i.e. there was almost always one or even two parked there, but no more than two) and departures were either on emergencies arriving at the trucks or every 30 minutes. That was the typical procedure for the military-supervised bypassing of all the slowdowns caused in Ireland for Operation: Divine Intervention. Hannah knew that once the time was right to release the details of this Black Ops mission, it would help her reputation more than harm it, and that was the secondary point of "doing what's right". The primary reason to do what was right was obviously that it was the right thing to do…

That reputation was something which would eventually save the world a second time. The first time had nothing to do with doing what was right, but regardless, it had been basically the same idea as the second time. However, that is another story for a later part of the SI Archives.

The public apology went well, and from that point onward, the clergy in Ireland quieted considerably and ceased oppressing women who were suspected of liaising with Germans. Obviously some of them were worried that more accidents would happen by the hand of God or something, but Hannah also suspected that it had to do with the fact that the quieter members were now leading the Irish clergy. Then again, they were focusing more on worshipping God and conducting services than minding the business of others, which was the whole point of clergy. This new devotion to their actual jobs meant that the general public opinion toward the friendly fire incident was "it was a tragic accident, but we can't say we're sorry to see them silenced and replaced by these new guys who keep their noses out of our business and are nicer people anyhow".

Hannah was thus happy that everything had been kept classified regarding the operation, and sealed away all the documents by heading home to give them personally to Jane. She also needed to check out the new innovations, namely rocket artillery and reloadable infantry rocket launchers. If they were as successful as Jane promised, then that would mean Jane would need to work on a launcher attachment for APCs so that they could handle heavy hostile armoured units. It would also mean that her infantry units needed additional training in the use of the weapons.

They would need to make do for training. Since Ireland's coasts were so guarded, she doubted someone could easily smuggle one of the weapons away from Ireland, so they could train the troops here… that was what she would do then. As for the rocket artillery, she just had to shuffle things around a bit and then all would be running smoothly again.

* * *

><p>AN: Even though currently we have SI being the "Above and Beyond" type, eventually we'll see a mixture of that and "Old [Reliable]" (brackets because modifications may be made to make the reliability part true) technologies, starting in WWV, you'll be able to guess many of them, especially later during TW3 and TW4.

REVIEW!


	18. London Bridge Has Fallen Down

A/N: I know the Six and O'Duffy executions are overboard, but the rationale is explained here. I myself think she went overboard, but if I didn't give her the imperfection of sometimes fighting fire with fire you guys are gonna complain that she's too nice, angelic and perfect. She's not, she can be every bit as brutal as anyone else, but she's very selective against her targets, which differentiates Paragade from Renegade personalities.

* * *

><p>Chapter 18: London Bridge Has Fallen Down<p>

_Ireland, Sometime in June 1943_

To address any concerns from readers of this archive, we shall reveal this historical tidbit: Hannah and Gunter (without counting the number of Allied generals and officers trailing behind them) actually had a talk about the Six and O'Duffy executions after the broadcasts. Gunter didn't quite approve of the methods of the executions, so his arms were crossed over his chest "Just… explain to me why you did it."

"One hundred thousand raped women by their orders, Gunter, ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND! Didn't you hear the voice-over of my thoughts as I killed the animals on video? We shot all the Blueshirts and SS men who actually took part," some of the non-participants had been allowed to live as POWs "but it was on these monsters' orders that it happened! Gunter, we give rapists typically a bayonet to the balls, surely a hundred thousand times the crime merits tearing their dicks off too!"

"Well, perhaps, but the barbed wire…"

"I remember you being there with me as we toured that concentration camp and saw the corpses of women strung up, some by their entrails, on the barbed wire blanketing the ground. You heard the screaming from those few that we tried to extract from the wires alive, and we saw how they died, even the few that we got out alive, despite our best attempts to save them, you saw us giving them morphine so they would pass painlessly. Tell me that was not enough to warrant dragging those responsible over the same barbed wire women died of exposure on, TELL ME!" She shook Gunter by his shoulders as he stood there silently.

Von Esling bit his lower lip for a moment before stating simply "I can't."

"That's what I thought, Gunter, that's what I thought." Hannah whispered "Well, I made it clear in the edited video that only dictators and secret police chiefs would receive the same treatment as they gave their concentration camp inmates. Six and O'Duffy were lucky that I didn't shove a poker up their asses like those women we saw in the second camp we overran…" Both shuddered slightly while those following them turned rather green, all remembering the dead women who had been strung up with sharp, blood-stained pokers rammed up their vaginas or asses. That had induced vomiting among a large proportion of the troops and a wild mutilation spree against the corpses of the concentration camp guards by others, especially the female troops who tore the corpses of the guards to tatters.

"But this way we aren't any better than them…"

"No, we are fighting on the right side and we have public support, Gunter. We are fighting for justice, liberty and truth, and we treat the vast majority of prisoners with respect and decency, far better than anyone else is doing at the moment. Only secret police units are shot on sight by our troops. I know I might seem arrogant to do things this way, or even dictatorial, but we both know that militaries need to run on a hierarchy, no matter how loose or informal. Tyrants need to learn that they should do unto others as they would have done unto themselves."

"I guess you're right, Hannah, I guess you're right…" von Esling stated slowly. "But I still hope you don't sink yourself to such a level after this."

"Don't worry about me, Gunter. As long as I can maintain public support I'll hold to my way, but if I can't then we'll just throw them to the mobs with instructions to lynch them to death." Hannah shrugged "You know how worked up I am about rapists or those who order mass rapes and murders."

"But don't you want to be different? Measure yourself to your own standards?"

Hannah snorted "You sound like a comic book character, like Batman, some things must be obliterated, Gunter, Batman is way too nice to Joker, which is why he can get out and kill even more people, something which neither you nor me can possibly allow of these dictators to get away with. Hence we need to kill them, and before they die we must give them a firm understanding of why they must die, namely what they have done to others, by doing it unto them… and I can't make my soldiers do it. Sure, if they volunteer they can have roles in it, but it's like executions back in the early days of the Spanish Civil War, usually it was you guys, the Generals, or me, who did most of the more cold-blooded executions. Otherwise the chances are too high that it will change our men psychologically and possibly encourage such violent behaviour in the field against regular enemy soldiers, and we can't have that. Remember, as a sub-section of the Extermination Orders section of the Code of Conduct, if enough regular enemy soldiers vouched for a secret police person being a good man or not participating in war crimes, our men let them into the regular pool of POWs and register it with their superiors, who almost always let them go if the stats I'm getting are accurate."

"You're a good General, Hannah, and I know that better than anyone, you care almost too much about your men, and I can see that, but don't forget yourself. Don't forget the Geneva Convention… you might be put up for war crimes after the war."

Hannah smiled a wan half-smile "About the Convention, we didn't sign it, and as for the war crimes tribunal, why do you think I waited so long to issue the first Extermination Order? I got Churchill, Roosevelt, Daladier, De Gaulle, de Valera and King to all sign agreement on it, and the second one they PETITIONED me for. I have all the documents needed to prove that I was ordered to issue those orders to the men, and once I drag those files out the tribunal wouldn't be able to touch me. Besides, Gunter, public opinion toward us is so favourable overall and has stayed such for a while, and will stay favourable." They left out the words about the propaganda departments SI had, classified under Espionage, all over the place.

"You think of everything…" Gunter smirked in admiration while shaking his head slowly, before he clapped a hand on his old friend's upper arm "Still, don't forget yourself."

She smirked back before yanking him into a pseudo-man-hug (the only difference was Gunter blushing heavily with her chest pushed up against his) "I try not to." She stated simply before pulling back, turning away and looking into the distance. She'd given up too much for her dream, she'd given up any hope of finding a man to settle down with, given up a number of things she had wanted to do, and given up all hope of a reasonably stable, risk-free life. Jane had given up a similar amount, and she couldn't let her sister, her workers, her soldiers and her prisoners down…

A later, more private discussion revolved around how the Nazi High Command would likely rather commit suicide. Hannah was indifferent toward that and merely stated "Well, good, we'll manage to purge diehard Nazis that we would otherwise have been missed. Remember, Gunter, although I believe honey works better than vinegar, sometimes you need to scare the mice into the trap to get them."

* * *

><p>AN: Himmler is going into a truck to be nearly fumed to death before being shoved into what his SS men told countless Jews and French intellectuals were showers and gassed, at least that's what I think should happen to him. As for Hitler, he'll shoot himself to avoid the embarrassment.

* * *

><p><em>Southern England, June-August, 1943<em>

Having regrouped and recuperated somewhat, the Germans from the logistical strain and morale catastrophe of the Ireland invasion, and the British after the long battles of the last year, both sides were ready for major actions of concentrated forces. The Germans were ready to resume their offensive operations while the British were ready to bleed their enemy dry for every inch of England they dared take.

On June fifth the Wehrmacht, exhausted, rolled into the city of Reading after vicious warfare in the hills, in the fields, in the forests, on the roads, in the villages and towns of southern Britain. There they stopped before the Thames River, as all the bridges had been blown and the other side was, like everywhere else, studded with fortifications.

It wasn't until July 5 that the Sixth Army, under Paulus, was ready to move on the major target of "Case Blue", namely London, but then it and the Fourth Panzer Army, both part of Army Group B, got into a traffic jam. The reason was that the roads in the area had been ploughed over and wrecked by the retreating British and the rain made the ground a massive pond of sludge. Therefore the Fourth Panzer Army ended up trying to cross the path of the Sixth Army using the few still-usable roads and hence it became a gigantic tangle of vehicles. The jam kept going until Hitler finally ordered the armies to both proceed east toward London.

During this time Army Group A was grinding west toward Exeter, constantly losing men to guerrilla tactics used by militia and regular British Army personnel (now including the million-plus French troops who'd been rescued from France before its downfall). News reaching the defenders of mass retribution killings carried out by SS Panzer Groups and Panzer-grenadiers in occupied Britain only made them fight harder and bleed the Germans for every step they took forward. Although most of the population had been evacuated, hundreds of thousands of people refused to leave their homes and were now living in German-occupied territory. Spies wandering the Continent reported mass disappearances of Jews, Gypsies and other groups hated by the Nazis, and desperation drove the armies of the Allies to fight harder. For every step, the Wehrmacht paid in disproportionately large amounts of blood, and so did their Romanian and Italian allies as Allied forces ploughed south from the Thames River Line's not so riparian extension, near Bristol, over and over. They left Army Group A's logistics situation rather messy and greatly slowed its advance, but could not cut it off nor penetrate the right flank of Army Group B, guarded by Italian and Romanian forces who had to make do with inferior or salvaged equipment. They fought with unflinching courage and managed to contain, if barely, the columns of T-1936Cs by use of direct-fire artillery guns. The Germans had less trouble with use of the current main production model of the 88, the PaK-43 and the new gun of the Tiger tanks, the KwK-43 (effectively the same gun).

German forces were slowly closing in on London, the only site left with bridges to cross the Thames with, from all sides. Auchinleck had divided up the CINCHOME duties and personally taken command of the London Sector, much as he had personally commanded the Eighth Army in Egypt even while doing CINC Middle East duties. He had long ago ordered the evacuation of those unable to fight or committed to take care of the children. However he still had to transfer all the railroad rolling stock as well as most of the supplies, especially food, south of the Thames to the north to save it from falling into the clutches of the Germans. Soon the river Thames was unusable as 32 ships were sunk from 25 to 31 July, and Auchinleck, having been reinforced with everything the British could muster without weakening the rest of the Thames River Line beyond control, hunkered down for a stand.

The RAF was effectively no longer an existent force by the end of July from fighting the Germans every night. The front lines collapsed line by line, and by seventeenth of August the Germans were within sight of the suburbs of London and hit the bank of the Thames on both sides of the city. Most of the city's population now consisted of relatively well-trained militia (mostly locals, men and women alike) and British Army regulars dug into, according to the _Civilian__Armaments__Doctrine,__Urban__Warfare_ Chapter: "Every concrete building, preferably buildings with steel beam reinforcements in the walls… Sewers, subway networks, and any underground passages large enough for men to crawl or walk through must be fortified…"

Street corner buildings were reinforced and fortified for use as bunkers with machine-guns, anti-tank weapons, mortars, barbed wire and snipers, any building overlooking a square was garrisoned by small units of a few men each. A-WSM-10-40C submachine guns had dominated recent shipments and were issued en masse to the defenders of the city in relatively organized fashion in preparation for urban combat, and so were grenades, as the best tools for house-to-house room-to-room combat were grenades and SMGs.

In the second week of August, the Germans had launched a massive strategic bombing campaign of London and the resulting firestorm had reduced the city to a burnt-out husk of its former glory. On August 19, 1943, the Wehrmacht launched a massive armoured attack into London's suburbs, spearheaded by Tiger tanks, followed by StuG-3 assault guns, Panthers and Panzer IVs. The defenders fought nearly to the last shell, to the last grenade, before falling back to rear positions where supplies were stashed for longer-term fighting. The sewers and subways were used for several surprise attacks on the Germans before they became the sites of incessant, grope-in-the-dark firefights between opposing lines of scrap metal and sandbags that served as cover, with only the flashes of gun barrels and the occasional ventilation grille for lighting.

* * *

><p><em>London, September-October, 1943<em>

The Fourth Panzer Army was unable to advance even a step as it slugged it out toe-to-toe with the Twenty-Fourth Allied Army, which marshalled resources in its defence of the rubble that was essentially the London suburbs in the here and now. Taller buildings saw floor-to-floor room-to-room actions where holes in the floor would provide targeting opportunities for those above and below all at once. By the Twelfth of September the originally eight-division-strong, 160,000-soldier 22nd Army, defending the railroads into the city from the south to prevent German advances along the rails, had to fend off three armoured divisions and eight infantry divisions of Paulus' forces with only 90 tanks, 700 mortars and three under-strength infantry divisions totalling no more than 40,000 men and women. Over the next seventy-two hours Elephant & Castle Railway Station changed hands 34 times as vicious fighting raged in the sewers, in the streets, and in the station itself.

Auchinleck made a bold and risky move: He moved his HQ closer to the combat zone, putting it in a deep subterranean bunker under the north side tower of the London Bridge (the bridge's central span was long since gone under Luftwaffe bombardment). He knew that the only way to survive was to beat back the Germans from flanking him along the Thames at all costs. However by the Fourteenth of September all he had left were 50 patched-up T-1936Cs (only their thick and well-sloped armour had allowed them to survive so long) and several thousand infantry with no reserves whatsoever. Every single man and woman fit enough to carry a gun was committed to fighting back the invaders, every single tank was fortified further and used as a motile, heavily-armoured anti-tank turret and pillbox, and every possible source of supplies tapped. The subway system, still well under his control, proved hugely useful in ferrying supplies and soldiers to him in a continuous stream of reinforcements as soon as they could be properly equipped and trained for urban warfare.

However, on the fourteenth, the Germans finally secured Elephant & Castle Railway Station and brought in their heavy artillery, including the 800mm railway gun known as "Dora". Then the Wehrmacht's 6th SS Division captured Guy's Hospital by storm and shot all the Allied wounded they found, though they did not find many and quite a few SS men were blown up via the wounded having had grenades with them as last resorts.

Auchinleck sent off his last 29 T-1936C tanks to fight, the battlefront blazing to a mere 200 metres from "Bunker London", even his staff officers were committed to battle armed with SMGs and BRs all stamped with a small Maple Leaf with Bars logo. Hand-to-hand combat raged throughout the city over many square kilometres, grenades and rifles were thrown and fired face-to-face, bayonets, knives, machetes, broken rocks and even frying pans became lethal implements of death as battle-crazed soldiers pounded enemies to bloody masses of cooling flesh. For every step the Germans took forward, they bled, oh they bled…

During the night of the 14th, things started taking an upturn for the defenders as the Twenty-third Allied Army filtered through the subway tunnels to reinforce the soldiers. However, the next morning revealed more German armour approaching, blowing buildings to rubble and crushing them to dust under their treads. They were only stopped by the last few heavily dug-in T-1936Cs available to Auchinleck on the south side of the Thames and a large amount of artillery on the northern side of the river, namely to the northeast of London Bridge.

The German advance was grinding to a halt all over the place and things settled into a vicious pattern of close-range urban combat by the end of September. On October 5, 1943, Stukas flew over 900 sorties bombarding Allied positions at the Union Tractor Factory, annihilating several brigades of Allied militia and regulars. The Fourteenth of October saw 2000 sorties bombarding the Tractor Factory and the Red Ensign Steel Factory, but the Allies didn't give up, transferring reinforcements up through the blood-painted, corpse-strewn sewers and subway tunnels to the positions. These same Stukas pounded the artillery positions to the northeast over the river before returning their attentions to the Allied forces. Having forced the British into a 2000-yard deep strip of land south of the Thames, the Luftwaffe worked even harder.

Still, Auchinleck was determined to stop them, and used his last 19 T-1936Cs, some of which had been brought through the subway system in parts and assembled on-site, fed with fresh ammunition through the underground tunnels, along with a few leftover T-1936As taken from a museum display, to inflict huge casualties on the Germans. The C's fought the German tanks face-to-face with extra armour bolted, welded or otherwise affixed to their fronts to increase protection while the A's pounded away into the air at the Luftwaffe aircraft. The 47000 remaining soldiers (less than 3000 were survivors from the beginning of the battle) of the 22nd Allied Army managed to prevent the Sixth Army and the Fourth Panzer Army from taking the South Bank of the Thames at horrifying costs. Scottish soldiers fought it out with the Germans in a pitched battle at the Red Ensign Steel Factory for some 144 hours straight, losing two whole divisions but leading to the Germans being unable to make even a single step forward. German morale was declining steadily while the British kept fighting doggedly on underground, in the streets, in the houses and in individual rooms.

* * *

><p>AN: I know, I haven't levelled Westminster Abbey yet, which is not in keeping with my hating on expensive religious monuments, but I'll do that during the Scrin invasion of Earth, don't worry.

* * *

><p><em>Liverpool, October 30, 1943<em>

"Well, we're back, where's our welcome?" Hannah muttered as her troops, all five divisions of them, unloaded from the transports as quickly as possible. This way they wouldn't be staying in Britain for more than two days at a time before the treaty expired. She heard the men responsible for the treaty had all been fired, and she was glad it happened to the bastards. She was also glad that they'd been pressed into front-line service, into the meat grinder of London.

Still, she didn't get a warm welcome. Instead, as her troops proceeded through the streets, they heard mutterings of "Colonials need to remember where they come from" and "Stubborn mules going by that piece of paper alone instead of helping us out right away like they're supposed to." Other symptoms of "National Arrogance" were all over the place, and Hannah briefly wondered why the hell she was coming to save Britain, before remembering the sum Churchill had agreed pay her for the clearing of German forces from the Island of Britain in his contract offer. It would help offset greatly the public gesture of the billion-CDN gift that King had given Britain.

* * *

><p><em>London, November 11, 1943<em>

"We have fought during 15 days for a single house," wrote a German officer on Armistice Day, 1943, "with mortars, grenades, machine guns, and bayonets. Already by the third day 54 German corpses are strewn in the cellars, on the landings, and the staircases. The front is a corridor between burnt-out rooms; it is the thin ceiling between two floors. Help comes from neighbouring houses by fire escapes and chimneys. There is a ceaseless struggle from noon to night. From story to story, faces black with sweat, we bombard each other with grenades in the middle of explosions, clouds of dust and smoke, heaps of mortar, floods of blood, fragments of furniture and human beings. Ask any soldier what half an hour of hand-to-hand struggle means in such a fight. And imagine London, 80 days and 80 nights of hand-to-hand struggles. The street is no longer measured by meters but by corpses… London is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those scorching, howling, bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Thames and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of London are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell in sheer panic, even the hardest stones cannot bear it for long. Only men endure."

His writings were essentially typical of the German morale level of the time. Their despair was highly appropriate, as far to the west near Swindon all six currently commissioned SI Divisions, 120,000 men and women, were preparing for battle. Facing them were about 150,000 Romanians and Hungarians, with inferior equipment, training, morale and leadership compared to the Germans.

* * *

><p><em>Britain, November 19, 1943<em>

In the night between November 18 and 19, the rumbling of over 3500 1500-horsepower gasoline engines firing up at once hummed in the air at the front moments before the crackling of the underbrush alerted the Axis troops that something was deeply wrong. That was mere minutes before a thunderous artillery barrage washed over them less than 1000 meters ahead of a gigantic herd of tanks. SI's units were on the move…

They were followed closely by over a million rather sleepy Allied soldiers, all motorized with US and SI vehicles, coming in behind them to set up defensive groups to guard the flank of the attack. The 160 kilometres from Swindon to Gravesend was covered in 5 hours of fighting on the move, and the Allies immediately formed a contravallation facing south and circumvallation facing inward toward the trapped 6th Army. Then the First through Sixth SI Divisions, the whole force, minus a few casualties and the Aviation Brigades which had been stationed north of the Thames, stampeded all the way to Dover after a brief break to allow friendly troops time to catch up. The Wehrmacht was taken completely by surprise as the SI armoured columns rolled into Dover in the chilly November morning and overran the shore batteries there.

Paulus and Hitler both disagreed with forcing a breakout while SI units were not immediately south of London, and Paulus told Hitler that he could hold out until Easter if he could get enough supplies from the air. Hitler agreed with letting Goring do it, establishing an air bridge… It failed miserably. The minimum supplies needed for 300,000 soldiers in winter were 730 tons per day, an average of 44 tons per day were delivered in the softly falling snow thanks to heavy anti-aircraft fire, swarms of fighters and raids on airfields to wreck the transports. The supplies delivered were often useless, and the Germans in the pocket slowly began to starve by December while SI offensives on multiple assault areas completely crippled Operation Winter Storm, the attempt by Germany (Marshal Manstein to be specific) to break the Sixth Army out of its pocket. The German position in Southern England was falling apart as the tired Allied Armies, bolstered by the arrival of the Raider Tanks and rocket artillery units of SI, plus American Bazookas shipped to Britain for Allied infantry, pushed them back. SI's 80mm rocket launcher had better range, penetration and precision, but it WAS somewhat heavier, despite only requiring one man to operate.

Wehrmacht soldiers trapped in London built makeshift windbreakers with snow and ice blocks, huddling in dank, musty shelters. Every man got only a slice of bread each day, 15 men shared a kilogram of potato, being wounded meant death, for their compatriots no longer had the strength to even unload the few supply planes that made it. In the slowly dropping temperatures of winter, the starving German troops slaughtered the horses of their cavalry units for meat, trying to survive on minimal rations and what they could scrounge up.

* * *

><p><em>London, December 23, 1943<em>

The pocket slowly contracted under pressure as the Germans retreated into the city itself, losing their last airfield on 22 December 1944. Shepard Industries took over the line against London that day, and all fighting came to a stop. Auchinleck personally asked Hannah why she'd stopped, since he'd hoped that she'd take the hazardous job of reclaiming all of London, and ideally get a better kill-to-loss ratio than regular Allied troops.

Her reply was "It would be much more practical to achieve a mass surrender than a massacre."

"How are you going to do that?"

Hannah smirked "Just watch me."

Gunter von Esling had written out the message which was typed up and attached in the form of pamphlets to the inside of a large number of food crates, as well as being shoved into the pockets of clothing before they were put back into the clothing crates. Then parachutes were attached to the crates' hooks and they were loaded onto SI's all-purpose aircraft in the bomb bays. The bays hardly required modifying to do so, as the securing clamps for the crate parachute packs were the same as the securing clamps for bombs. Then the aircraft were flown off in large numbers to drop food crates into London, flying in-line to the streets to try to achieve maximum efficiency. 400 planes were flown off in all on the first day, each loaded with about 900kg of food in the form of ten 100kg crates (90% payload, 10% crate itself). It was in a way the ultimate morale strike against the Germans, even though some British commanders thought Gunter was trying to help his countrymen by doing this.

Each day, the Luftwaffe tried to drop food and ammunition into the encirclement, but they were failing miserably, and since the Germans weren't fighting constantly anymore dissent was spreading. The Red Maple Leaf-painted crates brought food to them every day, not enough to attempt a breakout on but enough that men were no longer dying of starvation. The crates also brought adequate winter clothes so that men were no longer dying of hypothermia or frostbite as they huddled for warmth in whatever shelters they could find. No fuel or ammunition was given to the Germans, obviously, by the Maple Leaf crates, but not enough was coming in from the Luftwaffe to build up stockpiles with the occasional skirmishes across the Thames against the British. In the propaganda pamphlets SI had told the Germans only their persuasion was preventing the British from crushing them utterly, and that safety was absolutely guaranteed for all prisoners except SS units and collaborators. They also promised medical care for the sick or wounded, prisoners would be allowed to keep their belongings, normal food rations of 2kg of food per man per day and repatriation to whatever country they wished to go to after the war.

Paulus, ordered not to surrender by Hitler, did not respond, but each day a few Axis soldiers would, with their backs watched by others who didn't dare do it but prevented SS men or collaborators from intervening, smuggle themselves out through the suburbs. These surrendering parties each had a piece of white cloth tied to a stick, and were given food, clean water, and a truck ride to the nearest prisoner processing center. There they would be held, typically in a hotel repurposed for it, until there were enough to embark on a truck convoy which ran to Liverpool where they would be shipped to POW camps in Canada.

It took until January 1, 1944, her 44th Birthday, for Hannah to return to the active offensive, but instead of striking south as everyone expected of her she whacked the positions of Army Group A instead (southeast of Bristol) with a thunderous 24-hour artillery barrage before looping east as opposed to launching an attack directly. This opened up the opportunity for a push by the Allies near Exeter as Army Group A was re-orienting its main anti-tank units (up-gunned Tigers included) to face the elite units SI fielded. These units were shearing off another strip of Axis territory, north of but not including Salisbury, before ending their run at Canterbury. The allied defensive line to the north was watching from hilltops as a series of smoke columns spread from west to east on the horizon as they themselves prepared to push forward into the freshly cleared territory to reinforce the few units which had followed the SI divisions to deploy a new field defence line.

There were a few towns (that shall not be named) where the Germans were too firmly entrenched, so there was only one option remaining. It was an option which saw an additional three-quarter of a million 100mm howitzer shells being brought in for ten hours of non-stop bombardment of the German fortifications. Needless to say, by the end of the rain of 300,000 APHE shells and 450,000 HE shells, there wasn't much of the towns left for the Raider Tanks to plough through, their Dozer Blades proving horribly effective at ploughing away landmines, what few the Germans had deployed. The remaining German units, disoriented and disorganized, fought fiercely, but they had no anti-armour weapons left that were fully effective against Raider Tanks, hence only a few were disabled. The Germans figured out that a Raider Tank could still be mobility-killed if they knocked out both tread sets on one side). They also figured out that despite the far simpler road wheel system than the Tiger, Christie suspension and wide treads that there were in fact still times where Raider Tanks could get mobility-jammed, although you had to jam all four pods nearly at once to do it successfully.

The armour on the other hand was just too thick for their guns to handle, since there were no remaining PaK-43s available, and only those could kill a Raider Tank at fairly close range. They also had a general lack of artillery which meant only one tank was lost by an artillery shell hitting the engine compartment, which was in the front of the tank. The internal bulkheads and engine firefighting systems meant only the driver died from shrapnel and the rest of the crew bailed out before the tank brewed up. Certainly soldiers still died while the tanks crushed and ploughed the mountains of rubble out of their way, but they were far fewer than British or other Allied casualties would have been. This was simply because of the extravagant consumption of cannon shells of various calibres, 100mm howitzer shells, 60mm mortars for fire support, and machine-gun ammunition used to level hostile strongholds that refused to surrender. There weren't many that did so, but those that did refuse to surrender were flattened to the ground by the thunderous rolling of armoured warfare. Over the next century, many sources would attempt to claim that tanks became obsolete in urban warfare with the advent of newer anti-tank weapons, but they would be proven wrong time and time again.

* * *

><p><em>London, 2 February, 1944<em>

The dissent had finally reached its flashpoint. Ammunition hoarded for weeks by the Wehrmacht units and what was stolen from the SS units immediately beforehand was put into use as things boiled over and the men mutinied. SS men trying to stop it were shot, bayoneted, or stampeded by hordes of angry Wehrmacht, Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian soldiers as they seized control of the HQ of Sixth Army and took Paulus prisoner. 191,000 soldiers, mostly sustained by "the Red Maple Leaf crates" as they called them, out of the 300,000 that had been trapped in London surrendered that very day to the SI units to their south.

They were literally astonished when they were given food, water, medical care and shelter until enough trucks could be assembled to take them all to Liverpool to be taken to Canada for internment. Among the prisoners were 22 generals, and even Paulus was shocked that his men were treated so well after the video he (but not his men for morale purposes) had seen of the Six and O'Duffy execution. The film footage of the Germans marching unharmed into captivity and being taken to Canada for internment was broadcast all over the Allied Nations, just to piss off Hitler.

And boy was the dictator pissed when he heard the news, he spent three hours ranting at the OKW for it. Then he spent some time ranting at Himmler over his SS men letting themselves be captured. The few SS troops that had survived the mutiny, identified during prisoner processing, were all vouched for by enough Wehrmacht, Romanian, Bulgarian or Hungarian soldiers that they were allowed to proceed as normal POWs. This was actually part of the Code of Conduct Second Edition's section on Extermination Orders. It read something like "Be reasonable, if something like 30 men from different units all say that a secret police member did his/her best to stay out of doing war crimes and is overall a good person, typically they will be a good person, and remember, we don't usually shoot decent folk who are not attacking us."

The German POWs in Canada were meanwhile being put to work under reasonable conditions (even paid, though at a very low rate) in the factories that manufactured ammunition destined for the British Army. Although they used the same ammunition now, certain factories only produced gear bound for the Allies while others were for SI units only. Canadian workers were shifted to work in those factories in SI's supply chain. They were, obviously, more trustworthy than POWs, who, even without an uprising, could potentially be the agents of sabotage work. As for why they were treated well, honey always attracts more flies than vinegar, and heavy-handed tactics would only induce a revolt of some sort, tying up manpower putting it down and reducing the wartime labour supply.

Needless to say, once the Germans actually surrendered at London, their front in the south crumbled back somewhat as morale crashed and the Allies pressed forward in a full-scale offensive. They had rested and recuperated enough thanks to breathing space earned by a certain PMC's efforts, and so bore the brunt of the work this time, pushing their way south through the Germans with SI units only providing battalion-side detachments of heavy armour support from its Assault Armour Brigades where needed on the ground. In the air, the reinvigorated RAF (thanks to new shipments of fighters coming en masse through the now opened St. George's Channel) was pounding the shit out of the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht alike.

However, one nasty, ominous development came out of the blue in mid-January. Raider Tanks began getting destroyed in numbers that a PMC couldn't afford, and the toll on the T-1936Cs and Sherman tanks the other Allies were still using was even worse. The "Panzerfaust" rocket launcher had arrived on the scene. Certainly it took a great deal of skill to score a kill on a Raider Tank, demanding a shot downward to the top or at an angle perpendicular to the side or rear plating, but in urban warfare it was not too difficult to do so. As for the lighter tanks, they hardly stood a chance against the Panzerfaust, much as how the German tanks did not stand a chance against a close-range Bazooka or Ram shot.

The Ram or A-WRL-80-15A, so nicknamed as the head was a distinctive double-cone shape which was wider in diameter than the 80mm of the propulsion section much like a battering ram (A/N: akin to an RPG-7 in shape), had its warhead design devised by Mohaupt. It was the SI issued anti-tank infantry weapon. Each vehicle carried one inside, even tanks, for emergency use against hostile armour, though hatches had to be popped to use it. In the case of Mechanized or Motorized infantry, acted their main anti-armour weaponry when heavier support from their own attached HQ sections was not available. It had been recognized by all sides that HEAT rounds needed time and space for the penetrator stream to develop so the Panzerfaust had incorporated, in fact, a better stand-off fuse than the Ram had, but the Ram had a better charge shape and a larger charge, despite being smaller calibre. The two weapons were roughly even in power, but the Germans had fewer of theirs. Still, they were employed to horrific effect against Allied armoured columns.

Losses were mounting… until it was found that assault infantry could handle the anti-tank soldiers effectively as the anti-tank soldiers took too long to reload. Still, over fifty Raider Tanks were disabled or destroyed in a week during the time of the Panzerfaust's successes. Hannah, appropriately taken aback by this, slowed her push somewhat and shipped in extra gun barrels for the howitzers and mortars that served as her artillery support. The Germans were able to consolidate their positions as well as blunt the armoured onslaught SI used as its standard tactic. This was a major success of sorts, as previously the Raider Tank had required close-range fire from PaK-43 or KwK-43 guns or an artillery hit to disable or kill reliably.

Still the overwhelming, crushing weight of the Allied advance, now bolstered by American forces arriving to get a slice of the credit for the liberation of Britain, pushed the Germans back slowly. The Luftwaffe flung more units into the fire, and the Battle for Britain stalemated once more as the RAF was being worn back down to nearly nothing, especially in terms of pilots. The Kriegsmarine clashed nearly daily with the Royal Navy and French GIE fleet, these were mostly indecisive engagements between submarines and destroyers of both sides. They were part of an unglamorous, inglorious battle for the seaways of Britain and Germany, but they needed to be fought. The exchanges of flurries of 5-inch, 6-inch and smaller rounds were occasionally joined by the 8-inch guns of all sides' heavy cruisers or the 200mm cannon/howitzer hybrid guns of SI Frigates, and even more rarely the 300mm or 11-inch guns of SI Destroyers and German Battlecruisers joined the exchange. Luftwaffe, US, SI and RAF planes wheeled thorough the air above the warships clashing for sea superiority.

Over a month passed with little change in the situation. Hannah had elected to give her men some time to rest and recuperate after the offensives, and the Allies hadn't had the patience to wait for her. They'd pushed the front another 5 kilometres up the slopes of the South Downs, and pushed Army Group A's forces back to Salisbury, but otherwise there had been few changes since the South Downs were so easy to defend even with heavy artillery bombardments exceeding 200,000 shells per hour.

Hannah was debating whether or not to press the attack before the spring thaw when horrible news came from North Africa. She had known Roosevelt had launched a massive amphibious invasion on the coast of Algeria as Spain remained ostensibly neutral. That was why Morocco could not be used as a staging ground unless the British wanted trouble with defending Gibraltar from the Wehrmacht, in case the Spanish were overrun. It had only taken two weeks for Rommel, having returned to that theatre from sick leave and bogged down Montgomery near the center of the Libyan coast, to beat the US troops back into the sea with horrific losses. Montgomery had to begin consolidating his lines against the looming German onslaught, and what was even more ominous were the reports of a better, tougher tank mounting a gun rivalling that of the Raider Tank. She needed to eject the Germans from Britain before they could bring their new hardware into play effectively.

That meant that 2399 aircraft from First Aviation came thundering down on the German lines like a great hammer at dawn on February First, 1944. 1 plane of the 5x480 total from the 5 static-deployment Aviation Brigades had technical difficulties and thus was not involved, hence the 2399 planes… Thanks to also being able to torpedo-bomb, the bay doors were in sections and overall the bay opening was quite long (so the torpedo would fit inside the plane and not hamper manoeuvrability so badly). Hence the bombers, loading three 5-bomb racks of "40-all" bombs and one "400-AP" each to fill up their one-ton payload, could drop their bombs rather selectively, as the bay doors were independently controlled, though they could be controlled as one if desired. They dive-bombed more important targets with their 400-AP bombs while dumping a smattering of 40-all bombs quite literally all over anything that looked important and a few things that didn't look so important but might have been.

The whole day and night was spent by companies of SI troops faking offensives, and for three more days the aerial attacks were repeated, slowly wearing down the Wehrmacht fortifications and mobile units. This was in addition to the companies taking turns pretending to attack to prevent the Germans from getting proper rest while the companies themselves, taking turns, got plenty of sleep.

On the fifth day, the aerial attack still came, but the radio silence, and occasional thundering of gasoline engines being revved up in the distance, that followed kept the Germans on-station for the whole day and the night, fearing an attack. The sixth day still had the aerial attack, radio silence, and revving engines. The Germans gave up being fully on alert by noon, planning to mostly sleep until night, as they knew Hannah liked to attack between midnight and four AM. She had certainly done it disproportionately often in the past…

In this case, the attack came at 3 PM, after the revving of engines became unusually loud, echoing around the hills that separated the two fronts before the first Raider Tanks crested the hills at their current maximum speed of 60 km/h and crashed into the German lines. In many cases the crashing was literal as they rammed PaK-43 gun mounts aside and cleaved through infantry with Dozer Blades, machine-guns chattering and 95mm cannons thundering. Certainly the fire was inaccurate and mainly suppressive in nature, but once the formation slowed down after ploughing into the German lines, relying on the appliqué armour plating. The reason why the charge was not at the restricted maximum speed of 66.6 km/h the engine could reliably handle was the weight of the appliqué armour, which was a sandwich of 10mm RHA, 4mm rubber, 9mm ceramic tile (the standard size and gridding, but only one layer), 2mm hardened rubber layer and 10mm RHA. It was applied on a steel frame of sorts as Mohaupt's experiments revealed that stand-off distance, other than that required for the particle stream to develop degraded the stream of HEAT rounds. It was added to every side except the flanks of the tank, and so helped them survive the headlong charge, including attempted shots from the rear. There were enough tanks providing machine-gun fire and they were close enough together that there were no real flank shot opportunities and the speed was enough that any attempts to shoot would probably be frontal or rear. Sure, Panzerfaust rockets, along with PaK-43s, still disabled some of them, but the overwhelming majority crashed their way through the German line. With Allied forces mopping up after them (though it took some time for the Allies to catch on to the assault) their thrust went until they hit the channel and spread along the coast in a thundering stream of steel, stopping only when they began running out of a type of shell, typically APHE, but still accepting surrenders.

It seemed that quite a number of the Wehrmacht men in the area as compared to previous conquests had participated in war crimes, and about twenty percent of the SS men in the area did not commit significant war crimes. Hence 96% of the Wehrmacht prisoners and 15% of the SS prisoners were sent through the processing system under armed escort. The rest were lynched by angry mobs of just-liberated civilians, often killed before the SI troops could push their way through (Dozer Blades were too dangerous to use here). Apparently, the locals weren't too happy about this, as "Those SS bastards looted from homes!"

The response was "Did any of those men kill anyone that you knew of? Or rape anyone?"

"… No, but…"

"Well then they won't be executed, got it?"

The SS regime in Britain had not been nearly as severe as in Ireland, but there were still concentration camps, the first ones seen first-hand by the Allied soldiers. Big strong men broke down and cried as they clung to the blood-stained pockmarked wall before which countless men and women were shot. They knelt and kow-towed in respect to the rows of little skulls strung up on fishing wires, strung around the quarters of the guards, the remains of numerous decapitated children. They gnashed their teeth together until they chipped at seeing the mutilated corpses of the women who had been used as sex toys by the guards…

A large number of American GIs attacked the camp guards, stuffing them into the incinerators alive, shooting them in front of the wall that prisoners had been killed in, jamming hoses attached to compressed gas tanks down their throats before opening the valves to make them explode… and so on. This was while Hannah was arguing with their general over the morality of killing all camp guards who didn't mutiny or surrender and willingly help their prisoners. Needless to say, that argument was wrapped up with Eisenhower entering the camp proper, looking around, gaping at the sight of the mountains of dead prisoners, sighing, giving the GIs latrine duty for two months for "wasting gas, fuel and bullets", and then turning to Hannah "Maybe you're right after all…"

Those GIs were not otherwise punished, and Eisenhower was said to have muttered under his breath as the GIs left (after they were suitably chastised) "They couldn't have left the job to me?"

Hannah merely rolled her eyes before turning to him "Well, General? Your president did sign the petition, which was by many leaders of many nations, for me to issue an Extermination Order against concentration camp guards. That was one of the reasons I issued it with international approval." The newspapers had included the clause of mutiny of guards and release of prisoners being a way for the guards to survive their jobs, hence the guards were still given a choice: Mutiny and release your prisoners, you may die fighting in the mutiny, or don't, and get mown down or sliced apart under SI Extermination Order Number Two. It seemed that about half the camps chose to mutiny whereas the other half chose to get the job done and run for it, none of the guards in those ones made it. They were hunted down by columns of vengeful allied forces or overtaken and destroyed by Raider Tanks while planes tracked and did their best to bomb them and slow them down.

"Yes, I am aware of that, Generalissimo Shepard..." That was what most everyone else outside Canada called her.

The sea bridge of the Germans was however yet to be slashed, and Hannah made that her next goal with the increasing numbers of Tiger II tanks and Panzerfaust rockets, in addition to Nebulwefer 6-barrelled rockets arriving at the front. Allied losses were beginning to climb too steeply for her to accept, though the Allies kept grinding forward much as they were slowly grinding forward in North Africa, the Pacific (the US was still at Guadalcanal fighting the Japanese to death via attrition) and Burma. Reinforcements and supplies were keeping up easily, but there were a few subjects of great irritation:

* * *

><p>AN: The following is historically fully accurate, the USN Atlantic Fleet did try to teach their grandmothers to suck eggs. I read a book on Mackenzie King's 1939-1945 reign.

* * *

><p>On February 16, Hannah received a communiqué that prompted her to pay a visit to Eisenhower to see if he knew anything about this absurdity. Jane told her that the US Atlantic Fleet had sent advisors, ADVISORS, to SI Atlantic Fleet HQ to tell them how to get the convoy system to work properly. SI had been in the business for nearly three years before the US entered the war and more than three before the US implemented convoys along its east coast. SI's Pacific Fleet's big submarines, fitted with the standard 600mm torpedoes SI used, had been fully trained and let loose in the Pacific beginning in July 1943, and so far the 30 submarines available had racked up an impressive 900,000 tons of Japanese shipping estimated to be sunk.<p>

They were big (as in displacing 2500 tons at full load, quite huge for a submarine of the day), long-endurance boats, to be sure, so SI's experience with submarine warfare was different from the German U-boats. However that didn't mean they didn't have years of professional ASW experience over the Americans, hence the Americans really ought to shut up and go home. The transfer of most of the submarine officers from the anti-submarine fleet meant the officers had all too much experience with sinking subs and thus knew how not to get sunk. So far only one sub had limped into port heavily damaged with only one of the two auxiliary engines working and a heavy list, none had been sunk thanks to Japan's inept escort system having no clue what they were doing. The boats were designed with streamlined hulls more suited to hunter-killer subs than hunting for shipping, but they loaded enough torpedoes that the lack of heavy topside guns didn't make a difference. They proceeded to and from operational areas by snorkelling, and were quite mechanically reliable, with many redundant systems. They were also fitted with sonar of their own instead of just hydrophones, so that they could pick up reefs and wrecks ahead while staying underwater, in addition to performing as an Anti-Submarine-Warfare platform.

"General, are you available?" Hannah asked outside the man's office, though the secretary had just let her through after matching her to her photo, her showing her ID, and so on.

"Generalissimo Shepard, I wasn't expecting you, but certainly, I always have time, is this a proposal for another attack on the German positions?" Eisenhower asked with a raised eyebrow.

"No, I just have some interesting information that I thought you should know. You know how your country just adopted the convoy system last month on your East Coast?"

Eisenhower was wondering where this was going "Yes." He replied before starting to drink the horse piss he had that they called army coffee.

"Well, General, I must tell you that your Navy has decided to send advisors to help my organization run our convoys across the Atlantic." Hannah had wisely worn a rain-proof overcoat and turned her back just in time as Eisenhower choked and spluttered his coffee all over the ground and her back.

"I'm sorry, Generalissimo, about your overcoat." Eisenhower spluttered and hacked for a few moments before standing straight again. "That, well, I don't know what the Nay was thinking, but I think they might have finally lost it. Teaching you guys how to run convoys, really? Are you sure they aren't asking you for advisors?"

"Yeah, I'm sure." Hannah stated dryly.

"Well, I don't know anything of it, though I think you guys should have told them to fuck off."

"My Atlantic HQ is putting up with it for now, but they did say they are encouraging the US guys to leave." The two officers shared a chuckle before talking some more about other things. After Hannah left, Eisenhower began to draft a letter to his President asking what the hell the Navy thought it was doing.

* * *

><p>AN: I am sorry, S058, but as there will be no Operation Ten-Sho, or whatever the one where the _Yamato_ was lost was called, it will be replaced by the _Bismarck_, a final, resounding reminder of the failure of the Battleship concept without enough support in the face of overwhelming air and submarine power. Believe me, even in SupCom battleships can be relatively easily overwhelmed by aircraft without enough cruisers and air escorts, and subs are also a big threat, so even with structural fields it still holds true. However, the _Tirpitz_ will still have a glorious last stand, don't worry.

* * *

><p><em>English Channel, February 29, 1944<em>

It was in a way fate's dramatic side that made the last run of the _Bismarck_ on the last day of February, 1944. Sailing in company with the _Tirpitz_, _Scharnhorst_, _Gneisenau_, _Deutschland_, _Admiral __Scheer_ and the three surviving Hipper-class heavy cruisers, plus a flotilla of destroyers, it escorted the latest convoy across the Channel. Luftwaffe strikes were tying up the Scilly Anchorage air forces and the run was too fast for ship interception from Scilly or Scapa Flow. However, the mighty fleet was not counting on the power of two factors: the submarine and the aircraft carrier, the main attacking warships of the future. The age that began with the _Dreadnought_ was about to end, though for years afterward, battleships would still serve as heavy anti-surface support for landing forces and many factions would not realize that the end of an age had already passed.

SI had two of their big subs in the Atlantic just for the mission of intercepting the heaviest Europe-built battlewagons, with the three Light Carriers in the Atlantic cooperating as an independent force that the Luftwaffe couldn't tie up. They had no idea where the carriers were thanks to the SI, RAF, USAF, and other allied fliers throwing up a tremendous screen of fighters that prevented recon craft from getting through. This in turn meant the German convoy sailed without anything close to adequate air cover.

What air cover they had was dispersed by a sweep of three dozen air-superiority fighters from the island of Britain before the torpedo-bombers and dive/level-bombers from the Carriers parked in St. George's Channel and the airfields in England respectively came at them. A handful of the latter came screeching down from above first, and they released their bombs only to have the battlewagons swerve hard to dodge about half of them. Then a pair of large splashes rose alongside the _Gneisenau_, one on the same side of the _Scharnhorst_, and four spouts of water towered into being along the side of the _Bismarck_. While all eyes had been directed upward and evasive patterns against dive-bombers were being used, the two big subs SI had in the Pacific had arrived and opened fire with the four 600mm torpedo-tubes each sported. One torpedo, however, had missed even at the close range they were fired at thanks to the ships being evasive.

Its flank torn open, the Bismarck began listing to port immediately as water rushed in and was soon dead in the water, its list steadily increasing while the torpedo-bombers came in skimming the sea. The destroyers of the convoy were busy looking for the subs, so busy that the main strike force of over 150 level-bombers, flown mainly from ground airfields and flying fairly low with 40-all bombs, managed to level most of them without too much trouble. This was mainly as the destroyers were also being forced to evade torpedo-bomber torpedoes and anti-air fire was therefore not as accurate as it could have been.

All 180 torpedo-bombers (the carriers had sortied every single plane) pressed the attack now, the ones that had already dropped, about a third of the total, strafing the anti-aircraft positions to reduce their effectiveness where possible as well as distracting fire from their comrades. 120-plus torpedoes cut through the water toward the main ships of the Kriegsmarine, swerving hard to shake as many of the torpedoes as possible. They weren't very successful and the only one of the larger capital ships not to receive lethal damage was the _Tirpitz_. The _Bismarck_ had just begun to stabilize when seven more torpedoes ploughed through the huge tear in its armour belt and lit off the rear magazine.

In a moment, just a moment, it was all over for the second largest battleship (the _Tirpitz_ was heavier) European powers had ever launched. The towering mushroom cloud had not even finished rising before the great warship slid beneath the waves, capsizing immediately and breaking its back. The _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ were listing heavily already from a flurry of aerial torpedo hits, though still firing at the aircraft in a gesture of semi-futility, and the _Deutschland_ and _Admiral __Scheer_ were out of control, their rudders blown away by torpedoes. As for the cruisers present, the _Blucher_ had buckled in half and was sinking rapidly while the other two were relatively undamaged, only listing slightly and now stabilized.

The air units retreated, having shot their bolts for now. It was a minor oversight on Hannah's part that saw Aviation Brigades not outfitted with the aerial torpedoes that were used for anti-capital ship duties. Their closest weapon to an anti-capital ship munition was the 400-AP bomb, which was effective, but not effective enough much of the time to inflict lethal damage. The German convoy plodded on to Portsmouth, short most of its escorts but with the merchantmen mostly intact. It was a wise strategy, as the Germans had spare merchantmen, but not escorts. The entire strike had only cost SI 27 aircraft for the German price of the _Bismarck_, _Scharnhorst_, _Gneisenau_, _Blucher_, and the _Deutschland_, which had been sunk while under tow back to the French coast by RAF follow-up attacks. Only the _Tirpitz_ and _Admiral __Scheer_ remained, and both were in dry-dock under extensive repairs after suffering massive damage in the strikes and follow-up attacks.

The next convoy never made it, without its capital ship escorts the Scilly Armada and Allied air units, including USAF forces, shredded it. SI Corvettes and their Attack Boats were given most of the hunting duty once the targets dispersed, using their powerful torpedoes and incredible speed to do most of the work, but no matter who did it, no further supply convoys reached German forces in Britain.

* * *

><p><em>England, March 1944<em>

Even then the last shipment to arrive meant trouble as King Tigers came to the field, mounting a 100mm gun, a scaled-up version of the 88, the tanks were slightly more than a match for the Raider Tank in firepower, but failed to match it in armour protection thanks to lack of ceramic. However, it still thoroughly outgunned and out-armoured the M26 Pershing Heavy Tank the US troops were being issued. The delaying action being fought in Southern England was long and bitter, the Germans using large U-boats to run the supplies across the Channel, and so it was that Churchill finally cracked and asked Hannah for help. "The British Empire would like to purchase some of your Raider Tanks, Generalissimo Shepard, to outfit our forces."

Hannah shrugged "Okay, how many do you want? I'll give you the used gear discount for the equipment my troops are using after they're all overhauled to nearly mint condition, if you want them."

Churchill's eyebrows flew up in shock "I thought last year you wouldn't let us buy them?"

Hannah snorted and waved it off "That was last year. I will be stopping production of the 1936 series because they were obsolete now, and I will begin exporting the A-T-1942A to you beginning with the next convoy or whenever you want it." She did have a stockpile of the things after all.

"It would be nice if we could get them as soon as possible." Auchinleck stated simply, fighting off the urge to snort, "They're the only vehicle we have that can fight the King Tiger one-on-one with even odds of victory, the only we have that can withstand a shot from the 100mm gun of those things."

His urge to snort was as the 1936C was still highly combat-effective against the main tanks of the Germans, the Panther, and even to an extent the Tiger. The 1936D, with an armour overhaul that added 4.5cm of ceramic layer (four 9mm ceramic tile layers with 1mm hardened rubber fillings, plus 5mm moderately soft rubber at the front to absorb shrapnel and prevent HE shocks from damaging the tiles too much), was still considered the premier Allied medium tank currently available. Well, it was the one with the thickest protection at least, able to withstand PaK-36 shots regardless of range and PaK-43 shots at anything over point-blank to its sandwiched armour (quite a bit of RHA was removed to keep weight down but the sandwiching worked nonetheless). A Raider Tank (A-T-1942B now that the systems had been refined more) could take a King Tiger shell as long as it wasn't fired with an angle of depression and survive, though surviving a second shot was not guaranteed. No other Allied tank could take even one shell from the 100 at engagement range. Hell, most couldn't even survive the PaK-43 at a typical engagement range of 1 km!

"Alright, no problem, expect about a rate of 400 to 450 to be shipped each month to you for the next few months as soon as I stop production of the 1936 series. During the latter half of the year however you'll have to mainly get the used goods though as I switch production over to other stuff, after that you'll get shipments of maybe 100 per month. Is that okay with you?"

"What other stuff?" Auchinleck asked while he was crunching numbers, with the 400 to 450 1936Ds delivered per month for the last few months plus standard 100-per-month 1942B production, the numbers crunched about right to 400-450 1942Bs, the maximum production rate. This was as the 1942 was more complex and took longer to assemble than the 1936C/D, which was colloquially known as the Jackson Tank to the British public.

"I'm planning on introducing a new and improved version of the 1942 to combat the King Tiger, but it would use a better engine" Namely the 2000-horsepower petrol engine planned for use on the new all-purpose plane SI planned to field later that year. "and employ heavier armour with an improved gun, the B model of the ninety-five-sixty. What really needs work at the moment is the transmission, so I'm expecting the thing to become available for production by October at the earliest."

"Any chance of getting it earlier?" Auchinleck asked.

"Not if you want the traditional SI reliability, and besides, it's pointless, German troops will be evicted from Britain by the end of March anyways as I ship over the thousand or so Raider Tanks I have in warehouses."

"That would be excellent, I'd like to again thank you on the behalf of the entire British Empire." Churchill didn't mention the price tag, hoping she'd leave it off for now.

Hannah smiled hauntingly "Thank my workers, Prime Minister, not me. About the bill… we'll leave that for after the war, I'll charge you a very small amount of interest as per our agreement, one percent compounded per annum, compounded annually starting ten years after the end of the war, on top of standard inflation or deflation rate accommodation. If you want to pay directly, pay me with the British interests in Canadian industries, otherwise, we'll leave the bill until you are able, though I hope you can start paying about five years after the war…"

Churchill chose to pay directly, since the bill was growing alarmingly huge with the tens of millions of rifles, grenades, SMGs, pistols, and so on that SI had sold him at essentially manufacturer price, plus the thousands of tanks, planes and literally many billions of shells and bullets. They'd also been Britain's lifeline during the darkest days as the "Scilly Armada" fought off every single German attack and kept the shipping lanes clear at a tall price for the French GIE Fleet, Royal Navy, and the SI Atlantic Fleet. This was why Churchill was very thankful toward them and chose to pay directly.

However, much to Hannah's dismay, the general British opinion in the Midlands, outside the war zones seemed to still be "business as usual" and colonialist in attitude, not quite subconsciously realizing that Canada was no longer just a British colony. Therefore the public reaction to having to pay so much for colonial supplies was rather negative, which did not bode well for her future business interactions with the British. Still, it was an Empire of a bygone age anyhow, and if she could get successful deals with the colonies as they broke away—like Kenya—then she would do well in the post-war world. Of course, she also needed to keep covering her ass with international agreements before any further Extermination Orders or subjects of controversy, but things were still going relatively well despite the losses she was taking battling in Southern England.

By the middle of March however, having run out of heavy equipment to hold the line, the Germans in Southern Britain lost their contact with the sea. The failing Luftwaffe attempt to airlift supplies was brushed aside, and the last pockets of resistance surrendered, as Hannah expected, on March 30, 1944. Auchinleck now owed her some good alcohol (he'd bet on March not being enough), which she sent home to her parents since she didn't drink.

In the Pacific, the battle of Guadalcanal had finally concluded favourably for the Allies and the US was planning an attack on Tarawa and Makin in the Gilbert Islands. Everywhere but North Africa, the Axis lines were crumbling, there, Rommel was again holding Montgomery at the Gazala Line. That would change as Eisenhower approached Hannah with a proposal for Torch 2. American national pride forbade purchasing of the amphibious-capable tanks SI employed or for hiring their Pacific Fleet, however, it did not yet forbid hiring them to be the first into the grinder on land.

* * *

><p>AN: I hope I explained how she's going to get away with the Extermination Orders. Also, Panzerfaust rockets are quite deadly here, King Tigers are also more dangerous. However, Shepard Industries always had a thing for large-scale production of expensive, powerful equipment to arm their forces with. They're like the Protoss while the Germans are like the Terrans and the Americans like the Zerg.

I won't go into detail on the Torch landings, but Grand Theft Auto is coming soon.

REVIEW!


	19. Taking the Initiative

A/N: I sincerely apologize if any British people are offended, but I referenced a genuine history book and the reason why Mackenzie King refused to commit Canada to a total war despite public pressure at home was because a Cabinet Minister visited Britain. He went there to see if there was a need, and the report he sent home said that the British were of the attitude of "business as usual", hence King refused to fight a total war. The Midlands, not ravaged by the war, met Hannah with national arrogance intact, whereas her troops were hailed as saviours of sorts as they came closer to the front lines. Everyone knows the Red Maple Leaf With Bars logo in areas of Britain involved directly in the war, since the rifles, grenades, tanks, etc. The British are using are almost all (90%) stamped with it.

If the US are Zerg then the Japanese Army might as well be a bunch of Broodlings. As for the Comintern and the inventions, we shall see… Amusingly, the RPG-7 this time will be a rip-off of the A-WRL-80-15A "Ram". As for propaganda usage of the concentration camp footage, we shall see some results here. I understand that people may be sickened by how truly horrible war is and how people are treated in war, but that's the truth, and this is a history archive.

* * *

><p>Chapter 19: Taking the Initiative<p>

_Truk Harbour, May 29, 1945_

Operation Torch II had gone without a hitch under Gunter's command starting ten days ago. Thanks to pre-emptive leaflet drops among the German troops in North Africa, the Wehrmacht units had offered relatively less resistance than typical, as they saw the SS units' desperate fighting as an admission of guilt to the war crimes they were being accused of. On the other hand, given guarantees of better conditions than any other faction's POWs, German troops actually preferred surrendering to SI contingents, as they kept strict tabs on POW counts and registrations. This was so their allies were strongly warned not to do anything to POWs temporarily entrusted to their watch. Amazingly, there was actually one concentration camp that was overrun by the Wehrmacht forces themselves, the prisoners fed and freed, and allowed to watch as Wehrmacht men beat the SS guards within an inch of their lives and then stuffed them into the gas chambers and incinerators alive to be killed. Needless to say, despite it technically being a crime, the ex-inmates telling the SI troops that came what happened was enough to guarantee the Wehrmacht men the nice treatment of typical POWs.

Because of the smoothness of Torch II, Hannah was smuggling part of her personal guard Black Ops team (sometimes referred to as the Black Guard) onto the shore of Truk, delivered via N-ES-1943A submarine. There were 33 in all, including one of her cousins, a young blonde woman (she was barely eighteen, but looked to be about sixteen thanks to a dabble in half-diluted Shepard genetics) named Tanya Adams who was in charge of the group of young raiders. They had all been trained extensively in in-close assault scenarios and demolitions, hence they would be able to disable the scuttling charges they needed to deal with. The crew had only been briefed fully about the mission after they were under way, and strict radio silence was observed. All known data collected through Espionage, which Included Propaganda, Informers, Spies, etc. but was a different department from Black Ops, about the _Musashi_, one of the largest battleships in the world, was given to them.

The American attacks on the Gilberts had prompted the mission to go ahead early, as Hannah feared the Japanese would move the battleship back to where its sister ship, the _Yamato_, was, at the Kure Naval Arsenal. The point of the mission was, as per the name, to steal (hence Theft) one of the largest (hence Grand) battlewagons (hence Auto) ever. None of the troops had guessed it from the start, they thought they were going to be stealing some sort of super-tank the Japanese were building. This was as some of them had been involved in the pickup of the Type 91 torpedo schematics that had enabled SI to innovate based on that and create something better. They had literally just strolled in and grabbed a copy, it was so unexpected and audacious that the Japanese never thought it could happen and never found out. Those men and women were not too surprised at the sheer audacity of this mission, only that Hannah didn't ask them to do this earlier.

The small squad led by Tanya managed to infiltrate the island without trouble, blending in with the locals easily as those without black hair had dyed their hair black and brought hair dye with them to ensure it stayed black, in addition to wearing hats. They found shelter in the wilderness and scouted the Lagoon over the next several days, used Japanese uniforms hung out to dry to infiltrate the HQ facility and, coupled with binoculars and other equipment, figure out that the Musashi was due to leave on July 10 under cover of darkness.

Obtaining the uniforms was the first bit of difficulty that Tanya overcame by noting the forced labourers responsible for the upkeep of the base hanging the clothes out to dry with no Japanese supervision. As there were spare uniforms also being washed and the Japanese didn't care about them, they smuggled three sets of spare uniforms out and dressed the more Asian-looking men they had with the uniforms. Those men simply strolled into the Japanese base, doing traditional Japanese greetings (they had been trained long and hard, so knew Japanese flawlessly) and blending in with the guards, though they seemed quiet and reserved, and kept to themselves to avoid suspicion when the time came for roll call.

Roll call was every fourth day, but the men managed to make it through their first roll call without trouble by not being there. Since they were typically outside the barracks and base "on patrol" no one noticed their absence and the officers just assumed other officers to have signed the men off already and ignored their disappearance. After all, no one could successfully infiltrate the main Imperial Japanese Navy base, right?

Hence no one noticed when pairs of binoculars looked through the night at the windows of the main officers' quarters block from all sides. The installation had been mapped over several days by soldiers dressed up as servants, the forced labourers were mostly all too glad to help, and those that weren't… well, they simply disappeared. The Japanese suspected nothing, as killing forced labourers was quite common for their soldiers as a pastime, merely reminded the troops at the next roll call that shipping in the labourers was troublesome and annoying.

That was how it was ascertained that the _Musashi_ would leave harbour on the night of the tenth to eleventh of July under cover of darkness. The team had arrived just in time, any later and they wouldn`t be able to infiltrate the ship, hence Hannah received a very relieved report the next and only time she conveyed a supply run to the team consisting of several carts of food tins and ammunition.

The team endured on the island, doing espionage and borrowing facilities such as laundry from the locals, paying with food stolen from the Japanese stockpiles. Thanks to having rat droppings collected from outside, they managed to steal some every night and persuade the Japanese that they had a very quiet rat problem. Of course, this had to be stopped when the Japanese finally brought in cats, but they still had enough to trade for a bar of soap to wash clothes and themselves with. Tanya and her squad used their skills to make do as they awaited the projected date of infiltration.

In the organized chaos of the Ninth of July, with the ship being prepared for sailing and the sailors re-embarking, along with army troops helping with the loading of supplies, provisions and fuel, the team smuggled themselves onboard. 33 men and women (though the women were relatively few) helped out in the work and, as night fell, when work finally stopped, they laid wait in the bowels of the ship, hiding from the night watch easily since the Japanese were quite relaxed. After all, who would expect an infiltration of a battleship? They defused the scuttling charges one by one, though the things still looked intact from the outside, and laid in wait in unused compartments near the charges, most notably hiding in the latrines of the ship. When morning neared, they hid in plain sight i.e. the mess hall, using spare sailor uniforms collected through the night from the storages to blend in. The women all had their hair cropped short, so none of the Japanese noted anything really abnormal, they left the mess hall one by one and scattered themselves among the facilities of the ship.

The day passed with them helping prepare the ship for launch, namely securing stores and checking things. As night fell and crew went to sleep except those preparing for the departure of the great ship, they excused themselves one by one… several had taken up stations helping organize the secondary magazines (it wasn't far from the janitor duty they had described themselves as) and from there everything went down. At precisely 2106 by the squad's synchronized clocks the Musashi cast off, and by 2200 had left Truk far behind, with only three escorts sailing in close formation, the _Musashi_ was ripe for the taking. At 2137 the squad had their last meeting, operations were to begin at 2200. The SMGs and pistols for the mission were carried in boxes and crates, and pretending to be janitors it was not outrageous to see them carrying the crates into the bathrooms, assembling the guns and outfitting the weapons with silencers before getting into position, quietly killing the necessary guards and hiding the bodies.

Tanya and two other men would be taking the bridge directly while five people each would deal with the main turrets and the two big secondary turrets plus their magazines (one person for the turret, four for the magazine). As none of the big guns were loaded they were not a hazard, but the magazines were. Several men and women were to take the smaller turrets on each flank. As for the remaining 13 people, 7 would be capturing the main engine rooms while 6 would systematically go through the ship killing every sailor onboard deck by deck. Surrenders would not be accepted on this Black Ops mission.

It all came to a head at 2200 exactly as the doors to the bridge of the Musashi opened and two SMGs plus two pistols opened up in a hail of fire, mowing down all the officers relatively quietly. Tanya shot the men going for alarms with her dual pistols before they could get there while her assistants mowed down everyone else with their SMGs. Thanks to the extreme training levels the spec ops squad had to pass, they were getting one kill per two or three bullets (Tanya was pulling one shot, one kill). It only took mere moments before the bridge crew was all dead thanks to the SMGs being fitted with large drums of ammunition instead of the usual clips. At the same time, firefights were being rapidly concluded in the main turrets and quick close-range kills were scored in the main and secondary magazines before the sailors could do something drastic. However, in one case a dead sailor was thrown atop a live grenade he had yanked out and dropped and the faces of the Black Ops squad members there were painted with the man's blood and entrails. They wiped it off their eyes and secured the magazine while the others were cutting their way through the ship. They had already silenced the radio room, bridge, engine room, main and secondary guns, and were methodically and quietly working their way through the AA guns and crew quarters. They were mostly killing via bayonet or knife with a quick slash through the throat or a bayonet through the skull to conserve ammunition for when it was needed i.e. those on station and alert being mown down quickly so they couldn't do anything, after stealth was broken even for a moment.

Aboard one of the three light cruisers escorting the mighty battlewagon, at 2237 hours (according to log books fished from the sea afterward) the officers on watch noted some flashes on the Musashi but the captain waved the claim off, saying "They're probably inspecting the guns or something."

It was not until 2313 hours that the _Musashi_ was declared all clear and the scuttling charges completely removed to be dropped into a lifeboat which was soon to be pushed overboard. In the darkness, running silent, none of the three light cruisers noted the 18-inch gun turrets of the _Musashi_ turning about, one facing each of the three light cruisers. Their first sign that something was horribly wrong (as they were maintaining radio silence no regular messages were expected) was a coordinated series of gun discharges at 2345 hours, six 18-inch, 1.4-ton shells smashing into and through the light cruisers, two per ship, exploding within them and tearing them asunder before they could even get a distress call off. The blazing wreckage of the one left afloat was fed another shell while the life raft of scuttling charges was jettisoned before being set off by an AA shell from a 127mm AA gun. The ships had all been sailing together at essentially point-blank range so it was impossible to miss, and the last light cruiser slid beneath the waves with one final, towering explosion. It was fortunate, as there weren't nearly enough crew in the infiltration team to reload the main guns faster than about one gun per three minutes. The _Musashi_ accelerated to its maximum speed of 28 knots and began a ponderous turn to starboard before settling on a bearing northeast to rendezvous with the SI Pacific Fleet and be escorted back to Vancouver. As soon as the rendezvous occurred it took on a large number of SI troops who hunted down all the holdouts on the battleship with only three wounded and five dead as their price. A total of 2399 Japanese corpses were removed from the ship, out of a crew complement of 2399.

The hardest thing was refuelling the Japanese battleship while under way, since the _Yamato_ class only had 7200 nautical miles endurance at 16 knots, at the speed they were taking, 22 knots, it could get about 6000 nmi on full tanks. The unfortunate thing was that the Musashi had not sailed from Truk with full tanks, which soon became a problem. The final solution was feeding the fuel through the typical alongside refuelling mechanism with modified hoses to connect the two different ends of the transfer. As soon as it entered the Vancouver Shipyard, also in cover of darkness, it was put into one of the giant slip sheds of the shipyard's capital ship compound, which had been rebuilt to function as dry-docks of sorts. That was to keep the men and women employed even after the capital ship building programme had stopped, and it was proving supremely useful now as it hid the stolen battleship from sight. This was much as strategically placed warehouses and hanging tarps had hidden the warship from the sight of the American consulate across the bay from where it was being built.

The next thing that happened was an army of SI personnel swarming aboard to remove every last bit of ammunition and store them in a new shed some distance from the slip sheds. Then engineers went over the ship in detail multiple times, analyzing the schematics of the ship and preparing them for presentation to Hannah, who would be arriving soon. Considering the astonishment of the engineers involved, it wasn't too surprising that when Hannah actually looked over the schematics, she rubbed her eyes and then looked again, before gaping. Finally she shut her mouth and stated grimly with her lips pursed "That bad, huh?"

Admiral Williams, who was also present, snorted "Yes, underwater protection is terrible, torpedo endurance is rather poor, no real double hull, obviously no skirt armour," no one else had adopted that system yet "anti-aircraft coverage is inadequate if one considers strafing killing gunners in unshielded mounts, radar… horrendous, the tall bridge structure and the secondary gun turrets, well, I don't think I even need to talk to you about that."

"No you don't, Admiral. Right now I'm questioning if I should remodel this ship or break it up for scrap metal and build one with our RHA as the main material."

"Do you want my opinion ma'am?"

"Go ahead Admiral."

"I think you should upgrade this one as much as possible for now, it's not worth it pouring money into a super-battleship program, and it gives us a more fearsome reputation if it is known that we captured this ship in prefect working order. If in future wars it's too obsolete, keep it as a museum ship and build new and more powerful super-battleships that can destroy anything else afloat with absurd ease."

"That works too… alright, Williams, you're in charge of renovating this ship to our standards, good luck… you'll need it."

* * *

><p><em>North Africa, May 29, 1945<em>

The Torch II landings had been successful and now the SI troops on the front lines were bolstered by American and British troops. The latter were eager to beat up the Germans for Britain while the former were more tepid but still inflamed by the clips of the concentration camps that the SI troops showed them. Of course the SI troops instructed them specifically that not all Germans were as evil as the SS and that Panzer crew uniforms and SS uniforms were similar, hence taking prisoners was still better than killing on sight. This way the few SS men who weren't bad could live as well as the Panzer crews who were captured. It was better than indiscriminate but approximately directed killing after all, and THAT was what made them "better" according to the SI propaganda videos, encouraging compliance with Extermination Order Number One, than their enemies.

Needless to say, for obvious reasons (not even counting the fact that Wehrmacht defectors did it themselves sometimes) EO Number Two needed only that they try to make the troops less overzealous about it and actually think before killing. Sure, concentration camp guards typically deserved everything they got, but many were just forced into it, and defected at nearly the first opportunity to do so, so they deserved regular POW treatment, like the few actually decent SS men. On the other hand, there were those Wehrmacht men who deserved anything and everything they got for their cruelty. The SI officers and even the troops did their best to teach their allies that morals knew only the lightest distinctions, sometimes none at all, and being SS didn't make you evil just as being a US GI didn't necessarily mean you were good. Fortunately, the Allies seemed to actually take the lessons to heart somewhat, and were actually thinking before shooting in all but the most ludicrous of instances. This was likely as the massive columns of Raider Tanks only the six SI Divisions could bring to bear at a time were their main counter to Rommel's King Tigers. First Aviation was still stationed in Britain for now, and Second Aviation occupied Scilly Anchorage, hence only the six Field Divisions were engaged. Still, their Aviation Brigades added up to a solid 1920 aircraft, which was still quite enough to swamp the enemy defences with bombs and fighters.

In essence, they weren't using much in the way of tactics anymore, mostly a sort of rolling thunder which pulverised German positions and crushed counteroffensives as they stormed into Tunisia. It took them seven days to firmly establish themselves in Algeria, because they had to babysit the Americans and British against marauding King Tigers. It took them only three more days after the consolidation to reach the eastern coast of Tunisia, fighting in six-hour bursts to give the troops time to rest between bouts of combat, though the number of divisions on the field was such that they had time to cycle and rest, only putting two divisions on the front lines at a time. The Raider Tank, though slightly inferior in firepower to the King Tiger (which had a slightly longer calibre but a significantly longer gun), once again proved the merits of ceramic composite armour as it absorbed damage that its lighter companions—a few of the American Pershing tanks and vast numbers of Sherman tanks—simply could not think to handle. Apparently the Americans were not yet aware of the point of a tank arms race, and preferred using tank destroyers to engage enemy tanks rather than the solution SI used: a better tank.

Both sides had their merits. A tank destroyer could be much stealthier or even just be a towed anti-tank gun and could prioritize mobility and firepower over protection whereas a tank had to be balanced in all respects. However, SI was a Private Military Company and thus could not afford as complex supply lines as a country could, hence it was better to employ only one real dedicated anti-tank platform i.e. a superior tank. The US seemed a bit too obstinate to really understand this, but Hannah, and Gunter, would let them learn for themselves as they lost hundreds of Shermans and some Pershings to the powerful German anti-tank guns while Gunter's forces lost hardly a real handful of the squat, reliable, powerful Raider Tanks. Whereas the Pershing weighed 42 metric tons, the Raider Tank weighed slightly more at around 47, but the Pershing's engine was 500 horsepower… and the Raider Tank 1500. Add the reliable, highly tested four-track-pod all-terrain transmission, thick, heavily sloped armour, and better gun, well, there was no contest really.

To put losses into perspective, three Raider Tanks were irreparably destroyed (as in all four track pods wrecked, transmission shredded, engine gone, gun disabled, targeting systems shattered, fuel tanks decimated, etc.) and had to be salvaged for scrap metal, extra rubber and ceramic tiles and whatever else could be recovered that was intact. Another seventeen were wrecked but repaired, and twenty-three were briefly disabled. The tally on the American side was some 479 Shermans and 13 Pershings lost, about 30% irreparable or captured, German losses were some 1100 tanks of various types, with 40% irreparable or captured, including all 231 Tiger tanks and 73 King Tigers pounded into the dust. No Raider Tank the British or SI troops were using (the British armoured units involved were issued the newly exported vehicles) was captured per se, though the British lost quite a number of the things thanks to inadequate tank doctrine. The per se part was as the three the Germans were salvaging and the two they'd actually captured momentarily were taken care of by 400kg armour-piercing bombs cropped by dive-bombing V-F-1940Bs.

Sure, the warplanes were aging and no longer had a total, absolute, advantage over the newer models of Me109 aircraft or their allies' planes, but they were still by far the most versatile aircraft any side had available, hence were still quite useful for combat. They were also available in large numbers even though production had stopped, hence formed a major part of Allied air strength, especially in the RAF which was using it as their standard fighter nowadays. The spare ones packed as crate form, and then the active ones, were being transferred from various branches of SI in anticipation of the soon-to-come F-1945, which was expected to mount a 2000-horsepower V16 gasoline engine. It would be the same engine as on the soon-to-come A-T-1945, and needless to say on that tank it would also mostly be the engine throttle mechanism that kept top speed down to 66.6 km/h (partly for safety/comfort and to allow the transmission to endure far longer before needing maintenance). This meant speed could be effectively maintained even when the tank was loaded down with extra stuff such as appliqué armour, just like the A-T-1942 Raider Tank.

Overall, the campaign in North Africa was going very well, and it only took until June 15 of 1945 for Rommel to be thoroughly ejected from North Africa. He was thrown back by Gunter's divisions and other Allied troops to Sicily, and the Siege of Malta was lifted for good that day. The tide had finally, inexorably, turned against the Axis in Europe.

* * *

><p><em>Canada, June 17, 1945<em>

Of course, things were going no better for the Japanese from what Hannah knew. American code-breakers reported, among other things, the utter confusion of the Japanese as to what happened to one of their two biggest battleships. Nimitz asked her if she'd sent her long-ranged submarines to dispose of the ship, and she told him yes without any sign that she wasn't being totally honest. After all, her N-ES-1943A subs HAD been involved in the operation. Nimitz congratulated her on a job well done in removing a Japanese battleship from the equation before the topic shifted to how bad Tarawa had gone, despite a US victory. He asked her if he could purchase some of the T-1936C/Ds she had left over that would have otherwise been disassembled for parts. When asked why, he told her that he needed heavily armoured units able to be landed on the submerged part of a beach or atoll and then fight their way onto land.

Needless to say, Hannah agreed on the sale almost immediately, emptying her stocks of the "obsolete" tanks entirely to the Admiral as soon as she could meet with his representative and review, then sign, the documents, which included a contract for lending some of her instructors to teaching the Americans how to use the vehicles properly and not drown by accident. Meanwhile, as she noted was written in the reports that came to her, the thorough analysis of the _Dawn_, as was the code name for the _Musashi_, was going swimmingly. The analysis thus far was that the guns could be retained and used until their ammunition was spent, but that it would be more practical to engineer her own guns for any future refits with changing technology. It was determined that the ammunition could be machined in SI factories, but there was enough for any combat op for now, and Hannah only had one op in mind for the monstrous battleship… It would be part of what she'd already started contemplating, Operation: Tyrannic.

The problem was, how could she steal the _Yamato_ as well, to completely shatter Japanese morale like a piece of talc meeting an 18-inch shell (from the aforementioned battleship) fired at point-blank range? That would be a problem for another day…

The American offensive in the Pacific was going well, as they advanced on the Mariana and Palau Islands. The amphibious invasion of those islands was inevitable, and the current problem was that she needed to stake out a base near Japan soon. North Africa had calmed down, so she figured that if the US attacked soon she needed to take First Division off leave, ship them back to Canada, move them across the country, and embark them.

NO. She would not do that, she would recall them now and train them some more in amphibious operations, she needed to strike soon after the Americans did so that the Japanese would be unable to fortify their positions too much. As for her target… she would decide after calling Nimitz again on a secure phone line.

It didn't take long for her phone call to get through to the American CINCPAC "Hello, Admiral. Can I ask a few questions so we can coordinate our operations in the Pacific?"

Nimitz frowned several thousand kilometres away in Honolulu "We hired you?"

"No, I'm operating on my own to, as per the Canadian government's directive, ensure an Allied victory in all theatres of this war." Hannah stated simply "So do you have plans for anything more than the Marianas and Palau Islands right now? Am I free to operate in other areas?"

"Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"

"Yep, Volcano Islands, Admiral, Volcano Islands."

"Feel free to go ahead, we don't have any immediate plans, but the Japanese might not react very well…" Nimitz chuckled a bit.

"Then your fleet will back me up if they come at us, no? It's an objective we both would like to have sooner or later… Well time our attack at the same time span as your operations so we can cover each other."

"Alright, Generalissimo, sounds like a plan."

* * *

><p><em>Taranto, July 19, 1945<em>

The Italian mainland still seemed peaceful, even with Operation Husky starting on July 9. This day, however, dawned bright and early… and with huge armoured columns thundering through the city of Taranto in a herd of steel, securing buildings one after another with squads of infantry from APCs and evicting Axis forces block by block. The city was surrounded by nearly perfect tank terrain for the Raider Tanks, which effectively sliced the heel off of Italy with supporting British forces establishing defences while the armoured columns of SI smashed northward, pushing to Bari, Foggia, and all the way to Ortona, stopped only by the fortifications of the mountains running down the center of Italy. All 250 miles, or 400 kilometres, were covered in record time: 15 hours of battling on the run. Then the troops stopped to rest and shift some fuel from their auxiliary fuel canisters to the actual fuel tanks the engines fed off of. The British were utterly astonished at the sheer speed of the advance, as well as the utter incompetence of the Italian military. In particular, the Allies were awed by the inability of Italian armoured units, which failed even to successfully engage the APC-1935Cs, to do jack shit.

The APCs had been upgraded to carry, in addition to the B model of the A-WTC-40-75 gun, two layers of ceramic tiles overlapping with each other and sandwiched between two 20mm RHA layers, with the customary 5mm rubber strip-tile face on the ceramic and the 1mm backing on the blocks, it offered even better protection than the original's 60mm RHA plating. Against Italian tanks, well, there was no contest really, its gun could cleave through them with absurd each while it was impervious to Italian return fire. The Italian government buckled and a coup, which was the outcome Gunter was pushing for, deposed Mussolini, and the Italian government sent envoys to von Esling to negotiate peace terms.

What took von Esling by surprise was the speed with which the Germans took over Italy and consolidate their defences, maximizing their defences along the Gustav Line, which was modified slightly to accommodate for where Gunter was camping out. Allied intelligence service failures meant SI's informers gave news too late to Gunter regarding the sudden change. By the time the General was warned, his five divisions were already engaged in pushing with the allies to the Gustav Line. There they would stay for effectively a whole winter, concentrating themselves on a push south, though it was more like a on-again, off-again grind of some 3600 tanks marauding around the countryside with thousands of APCs and trucks as support. Needless to say, this looked very good for propaganda purposes.

* * *

><p><em>Iwo Jima, September 13, 1945<em>

Something else that was very good for propaganda purposes was the one-day fight to take Iwo Jima, beginning in the dead of night, at 0000 hours local time. Raider II Tanks (A-T-1945As) and APCs of SI First Division snorkelled up onto the beach, their wide tracks gaining traction even in the loose volcanic ash, and opened massed fire on whatever defences they could see. It was a signal for the supporting ships, the whole SI Pacific Fleet sans the _Dawn_ (for obvious reasons) to open massed fire on all Japanese positions detected the previous day during a huge carrier air raid which disabled most of the AAA on the island and took out the planes at the airstrips. The American offensive on the Marians had begun a week prior, and so any and all Japanese attention would probably be directed there. Even if they looked at Iwo Jima, the SI Pacific Fleet could easily take on the Imperial Japanese Navy of today.

Anyhow, the tank count on the island was a bit over 700 on the SI side and 22 on the Japanese side, and with the Japanese only recently beginning to dig what had been planned to be an extensive tunnel network, the battle was a bit of a joke. This was especially true considering SI infantry usually rode in vehicles armoured against small-arms fire at the very least (for the trucks) and the Japanese artillery preparations were not yet quite completed. The Japanese tanks, well, the Type 97 "Medium Tank" had 15 tons of weight, maximum 33mm steel armour (on the gun mantlet), and a 47mm "anti-tank" gun. Needless to say, as the gun couldn't even penetrate a Sherman tank, it did absolutely nothing to Raider IIs or even APCs. This was especially bad as SI tank doctrine, modified after weaknesses found during the Battle of France, now included dozing off a large slice of any hill the tank crests with the dozer blade if at all feasible. Even in cases where it was not thanks to hard ground they dozed lots of rocks and such over the hill ahead of them to roll down on enemy positions on the reverse slope, and in the case of softer hills the tanks created defilade positions for themselves to increase their protection. The C model of the 10-year-old APC design fully allowed for integration of the dozer blade add-on, hence it too was used as a tank of sorts.

Only a few SI tanks were destroyed or even disabled (most by the 320mm spigot mortars the Japanese had) before the Japanese were driven into what shelters they had left, then were fed shell after shell straight at their firing slits. The chemical warfare filtration systems of SI vehicles came in useful as the Japanese used mustard gas as a last resort in the defence of their main formations in the northeast of the island, around 1030 hours. In response, Hannah ordered First Division to DEFCON 2, which authorized massed flamethrower use.

It let her take full advantage of the secondary weapon slot on the Raider 2. The main 95mm gun of this tank was offset near the right side of the turret with the gunner and loader in the middle, commander on the left, and driver in the hull. The turret ring and turret were quite large, so it allowed for a secondary weapons slot on the left side of the turret. Most of the time it fitted a 40mm gun for AA and anti-light-vehicle duty, but that could be changed… By midday some of the tanks had been refitted to accommodate flamethrowers, and these were used to barbeque the Japanese alive in their bunkers. Sometimes it had to be done repeatedly thank to the parts of the Japanese tunnel network built so far, but it was done nonetheless. Surrenders were accepted with the typical food and water line, which astonished the captives thoroughly.

At 1437 hours, flamethrower-fitted Raider II Tanks had literally blazed a trail up both Mount Suribachi in the southwest and the heights to the north. Soldiers were fighting through and thoroughly occupying the Japanese tunnels one by one using grenades and the SMGs included in their Heavy Infantry Kits. Heavy Weapons troops, using the "Ram" rocket launcher, took care of several gun emplacements inside the tunnels that grenades failed to knock out thoroughly enough. Two hundred SI soldiers died… in exchange for over 14000 Japanese troops, a kill ratio of about 70 to 1, but a casualty ratio of only 20 to one was achieved, hardly ideal. Still, it was understandable as it was an amphibious assault with a huge close/urban combat component, the kill and casualty ratios expected for open field engagements could not be maintained under such conditions.

The raising of a massive Maple Leaf flag, brought specifically for the purpose, by three regular soldiers, two Multi-Purpose troops and one officer, roughly reflecting the balance of numbers of the groups in the SI military, occurred on Mount Suribachi at1423 hours. This historical moment was photographed and recorded forever in the annals of history as the first time a foreign flag flew on historically Japanese soil. All six men would survive the war and be celebrities of sorts in their hometowns until their deaths…

The fighting culminated in a suicidal but relatively silent charge at 1900 hours in the darkness as the Japanese were pushed, shot and burnt into their last pockets. Firmly buckled up in their vehicles, with dozer blades clearing the mines and stones ahead, the SI tanks and APCs charged at the suicidal Japanese, slicing, squishing and mowing them into the ground. Satchel charges bounced off the sloped turret armour and failed to lodge under turrets as the space was just too small, the few that actually sat on the tanks were ineffective thanks to the thickly armoured turret rings and hulls. They didn't even do too much damage to the ceramic thanks to the rubber shock-absorbing tiles and the high-grade ceramic with the mesh-style cushioning between adjacent tiles. The Japanese on the other hand were not nearly so lucky. They were sheared in half by dozer blades, squished under powerful, very wide treads (fitted specifically for this mission to ensure traction even on the volcanic ash of the beaches), shredded by machine-gun fire, liquefied and/or vaporized by cannon fire, and burnt to crisps by flamethrowers.

Iwo Jima was declared secure at 2300 hours that night, and Shepard Industries made yet another great contribution to the Allied war effort. In the future, several tens of thousands of sorties of B-29s would make emergency landings on the island for repairs and refuelling, at a minimal fee, less than even the cost of American maintenance and such, in fact, it was mostly meal money for the food served to the crews. As for the IJN, well, they could hardly do much from the battering they'd taken in the Marianas Turkey Shoot a couple weeks prior (and the massive US fleet presence in the Marianas).

Amusingly, the Turkey Shoot had initially been a ruse with a false bombardment of a few random islands in the Marianas to draw out the Japanese fleet, then escalated when the US realized just how much of an advantage they had now. The IJN hardly had much fuel left either, thanks to the massive unrestricted submarine warfare of SI and the US bleeding Japan of oil (and of course thanks to the Japanese lack of organized convoys allowing the subs such success). This meant that Japan was effectively screwed and had to accept the loss of Iwo Jima just like they had to accept the mysterious disappearance of one of their two most powerful battleships.

* * *

><p><em>Saipan, September 21, 1945<em>

When the First Assault Armour and First Motorized Brigades were moved south to Saipan on September 20 to support the US operations taking the island with the heavy kill-power of the Raider II tank, they were not expecting several things. The first was the retarded inter-service controversy between US Marines and Army command chains. Needless to say, that controversy was quickly quelled with the quick crushing of Japanese entrenchments once the big boys arrived. Raider II tanks fitted with appliqué armour, dozer blades and flamethrowers used those and their standard cannons and machine guns to plough, burn, bury and blast Japanese fortifications and soldiers alike. They crushed Japanese lines line by line, buried them trench by trench and killed them man by man all while their appliqué armour prevented all but the heaviest Japanese artillery guns from reaching the main armour's ceramic layer. The trench burial was because one trench had mobility-killed a Raider Tank with a shot to the bottom by a spigot mortar, though the armour there was still better than land mines could penetrate, it wasn't quite enough to hold off a 320mm mortar round. The tank lost transmission to the front track pods, though the partial double hull prevented it from being a catastrophic or even crew kill, hence doctrine was revised to bury enemy trenches.

The second unexpected thing was the communications intercepted between the garrison and the Japanese mainland. Saito, the Japanese commander on the island, sent back to the mainland the message that "There is no longer any distinction between civilians and troops. It would be better for them to join in the attack with bamboo spears than be captured." From the mainland came an imperial order authorized by Emperor Hirohito himself that encouraged the civilians of Saipan to commit suicide for an honoured place in the afterlife, equal to soldiers who died in battle. When this and its translation was broadcast by Hannah over the Supreme Command Channel during the first night of her forces on the island, getting organized and getting intelligence from American units, she was swamped by unit commanders pinging her regarding the truth of the order. They were in disbelief until they were told by Japanese history experts that half the palace staff would have committed ritual suicide if the sacred seals of their Emperor were misapplied. The thundering roar of some 20,000 soldiers, later to be echoed across SI and the Western World as the barbaric order was relayed to them, shook the ground and that night. It was mere hours before the first massed Allied night-time attack began, tearing into the Japanese lines and through them with a gigantic wall of steel, treads, and fire. One need not mention that the aforementioned wall also contained tens of thousands of utterly outraged Allied soldiers.

It was the next night that the Japanese did their Banzai charge, led by 12 men carrying a large red flag, about 4000 men charged in a final attack. All 12 were scythed down by sniper fire from SI APCs' broadside firing ports within seconds after emerging, since the troops were trained to be good shots up to 600 meters with their rifles when the vehicles were stationary. The vehicles turned to present full broadside gun port fire before sitting still, with their turrets traversed to fire against the Japanese out in the open, using 40mm HE shells for APCs and standard FMJ rounds for the machine-guns. The tanks sprayed bullets from their coaxial machine guns, one gun per tank, and roasted the Japanese with their flamethrowers. The 95mm guns bellowed once in a while at larger concentrations of Japanese forces and tore them to half-cooked meat en masse as the chattering of machine-guns and constant banging of semiautomatic rifle fire handled the rest in the SI sector of the line.

In the American sector the Japanese had more success, managing to enter the positions of the Army and Marine units before being eradicated to the last man by US troops, 1000 men of the 4000 had formed that secondary assault force, while the main 3000 was on the other wing of the line running themselves into a solid wall of death. Just after the Japanese offensive was shattered SI and US troops stormed toward the north end of the island as in the morning mist they saw people jumping from cliffs near the north end of the island. As they roared closer to the cliffs they saw adults throwing children off before jumping themselves, and the final group, Japanese soldiers, were overwhelmed by a mass of enraged Allied personnel. After taking an hour to recover several infants and young children who had miraculously survived the fall from among the heaps of corpses at the bottom of the cliffs, the troops were in even more of a frenzied state than before. Sifting through mountains of dead, mangled civilians did that to soldiers…

After the Generals on the US side came ashore and saw the scenes and the countless Japanese who had killed their families and then themselves, they gave one order: "Men, for those Japanese troops physically helping push or throw people off the cliffs, feel free to do whatever you want to them. Make it painful." Hannah agreed and told her units to cooperate with the US troops on this one. They didn't need much encouragement, especially as they had seen the Japanese troops throwing babies over the cliff before they had sniped the offenders in all their limbs to immobilize them. They hadn't been killed outright because it seemed everyone was of one mind to form a lynch mob. The bloodied, beaten-up Japanese who had been seized (and beaten within a millimetre of their lives) atop the cliffs soon found themselves stripped to their underwear and nailed to trees by their hands and feet by half-crazed GIs. Sifting through piles of broken bodies at the base of the cliffs to search for the source of the wails of the few infants that had survived the fall, and to look for any survivors, had completely erased any hint of mercy the Americans or even SI troops could have offered their captives.

The nailing was moments before the Allied troops went at them with what Hannah had told them to use, just "to conserve supplies, our knives are better used for eating food and fighting, not punishing worthless animals": Blunt shaving razors. After the initial frenzy of slicing, handfuls of salt were thrown at the animals before they were fed one by one, bit by bit into the grinding tracks of a Raider II tank. Thanks to about 50,000 signatures on a petition Hannah got the next day (the entire American force at Saipan plus her own troops), plus news of similar petitions circulating at home and in other countries around the world, one thing was for sure: Though the barbaric beast that would be the target did not realize it yet, Hirohito was irrevocably screwed. Even if he was captured by Americans, he would be screwed, even his remains would be thoroughly screwed over if he committed hara-kiri aka seppuku before they could nab him. The reasoning was that "The blood of twenty thousand Japanese civilian suicides on Saipan demands justice, even if the Japanese themselves are too brainwashed to do it themselves". The screw-over was proven quite true later on… but that is for a later chapter of this archive.

The next problem was where to go from there. The obvious choice was the Philippines, but from September to early spring, the eastern Philippines would be effectively one gigantic swamp, hence all the commanders agreed to wait. Giving troops rest and re-equipment time, plus letting the Japanese do stupid things, and bleed some more from their commerce war, wasn't a bad thing. The Americans planned on building up more forces over the winter, and if armoured units could be fielded safely in the late spring next year (the T-1936Ds originally intended for Saipan had ended up in Australia thanks to a shipping error in the paperwork) it would more than make up for a brief pause in offensive operations. As for Okinawa, to be used as a jump-off against the Japanese Home Islands, that would wait until after the Philippines. Hannah had no desire to take Okinawa, but she didn't have any major operations in Europe planned until June 1946 anyhow, so First Division could afford to loiter around in similar fashion to Gunter's forces loitering in Italy, helping contain and annihilate any and all German counter-offensives. In the meantime, over the winter, three more Divisions would become active, raising her total to nine, with 180,000 soldiers enlisted.

* * *

><p>AN: What do you all think of making Stalin (who is even more of a lunatic than Hitler) torture and kill women who roughly match Hannah's physical description, one woman killed per campaign that SI beats his armies in during the Third World War? Then we can see what righteous retribution really means, although showing the footage Stalin kept of his kills (which by his diary he intended to throw in Hannah's face before torturing her to death) will make the audience so incensed they'll cheer Hannah on as she takes the dictator apart on live-broadcast television with the same tools the dictator had personally used on women i.e. scalpel, tweezers, tongs, red-hot brands and pokers, needles, torches, sandblasters, etc. This is of course after yanking him from the rubble in Moscow in a modified ending of RA1. General Stavros (the Greek guy in the RA1 briefings, remember, the dark haired one. Gunter's the grey haired German in RA1) knew that Hannah would give the man far worse an end than he would, and it would be internationally acclaimed too, hence he didn't stop the GIs from pulling Stalin out of the rubble this time around.

Incidentally, about the Americans, Clark is going to GET IT from Gunter von Esling for Anzio! The dumb fucker went for glory in liberating Rome instead of military practicality, which means that von Esling will be the one to liberate the city and hold the press conference Clark wanted to hold, as well as get the job done on Route 6, just to rub it all in Clark's face.

REVIEW!


	20. Landings, Landings Everywhere…

A/N: If you don't think the US Army/Marines would let war crimes happen or participate, Okinawa's native historians estimate 10,000 rapes by American soldiers of women during the three-month campaign, and Japanese rapes were even more plentiful. The American ones were one of the shameful secrets that American history covers up. This is markedly different from looting and other crimes, committed by SI troops in the few cases that it happened in violation of the Code of Conduct (which states that disturbing civilians outside of the various doctrines and tactical necessity warrants investigation). Foraging doctrine could apply to food, clothes and building materials, but other items like art or money in significant sums (if you find a dollar dropped on the ground and pocket it, whatever)… well, the guy had better not look for another job in Canada, because his name will be all over the papers IF it's bad enough to get him fired.

Being fired aka dishonourable discharge from SI renders one blacklisted in the eyes of the vast majority of Canadian employers as SI is currently THE towering symbol of Canada as a nation and its reputation is centered on "Doing what's right" and "Delivering Justice where due". It's not unlike the Justicar Order in a way, but with hundreds of thousands of soldiers, far better-trained and equipped than average grunts, but mostly not quite up to other nations' Black Ops standards. Still, if you're fired, you're a disgrace to the country, though so far only a small handful of troops have been fired since discipline in this respect gets through to the men's brains (We don't make you march tens of miles each day or salute like a board, but you have to not loot, that sound good? Great, let's get moving men). Sure, SI troops have a hard time saluting crisply and the ranks typically mingle and interact relatively freely with few formalities, but they can dig foxholes and slit trenches faster, organize themselves faster thanks to better familiarity between officers and men, and shoot better under fire than other Allied units. That's what really matters, right?

* * *

><p>Chapter 20: Landings, Landings Everywhere…<p>

_Anzio, January-February 1946_

Poor Allied planning and miscommunications, plus lack of confidence and the fact that the units involved were not issued the Raider Tanks being handed over to the Allies with the arrival of Raider IIs for the SI troops, but instead the Pershing, saw the January 22 landings at Anzio bog down. Unlike SI doctrine which stressed that any surprise was to be milked for what it was worth, General Lucas of the US Army entrenched right away. He failed even to seize the Alban Hills overlooking his landing zone, which brought a gigantic face-palm from Gunter von Esling when he finally received the reports of the Anzio landings many days after the fact. The whole point of a surprise landing, in von Esling's opinion, was to occupy the high ground ASAP and batter the enemy counter-offensive before continuing to push like a great sword into the enemy's soft underbelly. By the time he sent Lucas a message asking him what the hell he was doing, Lucas was already too busy fighting off German offensives to do jack shit.

Apparently there was a reason that the later referendum would choose Gunter as the Wehrmacht Supreme Commander after the war: He was GOOD. The beachhead was quickly contained by no fewer than three full German divisions and elements of eight more, with five additional divisions en route to crush the pocket. The Battle of Anzio began in earnest on January 30, when Lucas FINALLY moved, or tried to move. Two Ranger Battalions were ambushed thanks to faulty intelligence and of 767 men only 6 made it back to the Allied lines. The US Third Infantry captured ground three miles deep on a 7-mile-wide stretch of front line, but failed to break into Cisterna. Captured US troops were driven by elements of the Hermann Goring Division at bayonet-point toward the Allied lines, with the Germans demanding surrender. Every time a German was shot, a prisoner was bayoneted.

When Gunter heard of this news, hidden from the Allied lower echelons to keep morale up as they were stalled in front of the Gustav Line, he immediately distributed it to all his units with orders to tell their Allies. The next thing that happened was General Alexander, Allied CINC Mediterranean, phoning Gunter. "What the hell do you think you're doing von Esling? Leaking information like that…"

"Will only encourage the men to fight harder and hate the Nazis more, General." Gunter interrupted calmly. It would almost be as effective as when they saw the Germans using mustard gas on concentration camp inmates, many had asked Hannah to go to DEFCON 1 and authorize Chemical Warfare. Unfortunately, that was just a sort of placeholder to make DEFCON 1 more intimidating, since SI did not own any reserves of chemical weapons. Gunter had found out the hard way when he asked Hannah why they didn't gas the Japanese hold-outs on the _Musashi_, after reading that particular mission summary and making a mental note to personally request Tanya specifically for future hardcore Black Ops missions.

Alexander heaved a long sigh "well it's working, the men are all asking their officers when we'll launch a massed offensive, instead of how they were moaning and groaning about wanting a break a week ago… but they all want a slice of the Hermann Goring Division."

"Remember, it was the First Brigade of said division that did it…"

"Yeah, that's what I meant, anyways, good job on getting our men's fighting spirits up, I guess Churchill was right when he told me you were about as good as your Generalissimo at psychological warfare."

"No, Hannah's way better than I am. She taught me nearly everything I know today."

"Well, can you spare any support for us?"

"I could try, but in the winter Raider Tanks aren't the best tools, the snow's too deep for us to plough through without fear of mines and such… I can manage in March though."

"How are you going to do things?"

"If we want operational security, General, I'll do things my own way."

Alexander chuckled "Well, von Esling, feel free to surprise me."

* * *

><p><em>Leyte, April 1946<em>

MacArthur was among the first Americans to set foot again on the Philippines on April 20, and it was then that he said a quote which would many years later be used in the movie _Independence__Day_: "Hello boys… I'm BAAACK!" He growled at a ragged Japanese flag that had fallen over already before walking past and beginning his real declaration "People of the Philippines, I have returned! By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil!"

He finished just before an SI Raider II tank, ploughing up a shallow ditch and pushing some dirt in front of its dozer blade, stormed past nearby and spewed flames into a Japanese bunker just over the crest of a hill (the tank positioning itself hull-down on the revere slope). That was an instant before the big 95mm gun barked once, then the turret traversed, flamethrower still firing and machine-gun chattering, as the cannon was reloaded and fired again, obliterating another Japanese position. An explosion saw a hole appear in one of the appliqué armour plates held off the hull by braces, but the tank itself remained unharmed and fired back along with a number of its brethren that had shovelled the top of the hill off as they crested it. No more return fire met the armoured advance after that, and they went over the hill without trouble. MacArthur smirked before adding another part to his declaration "It's also partly by the grace of Generalissimo Hannah Shepard that we're suffering so few casualties…"

Over the next days, the tanks dozed their own path using their dozer blades to stupendous effect, supported by mortar, howitzer and rocket artillery fire from SI Mortar Trucks, Howitzer Trucks/Towed Howitzers and Rocket Trucks alike. The dozer blades buried Japanese bunker firing ports on numerous occasions, and allowed the vehicles to push aside trees blasted aside by high explosive shells. They cleared a log and dirt path wide enough to fit vehicles with space to spare through the mountainous jungle across the waist of the island, taking several days to make the 45 miles, which would normally have been a bit over two hours' drive for a Raider Tank over rough, bare terrain. In total, with close infantry support provided by the Americans, the SI Tanks and APCs, with truck support, finished taking the island two weeks after the invasion began. MacArthur had asked Hannah to lend a hand (she agreed to do it in exchange for the US acknowledging SI's ownership of several islands/territories for posterity) as he was tired of waiting for US amphibious tanks to be engineered and produced. He needed better armoured support than anyone else could give, and she was his pass to that armoured support.

However, in the meantime, the SI Pacific Fleet, the US 3rd and 7th Fleets, and the Imperial Japanese Navy were fighting it out tooth and nail for naval supremacy around the Philippines…

Both of the main belligerents did not become conscious of their epic failures of coordination, the US until it was nearly too late, and the Japanese never realizing. Neither side had an overall operational commander. After destroying much of the Japanese air power that could have been committed to Sho-Go-1 (Victory Plan 1) by hitting their fields in Formosa, Halsey's Third Fleet was simply given the task of annihilating any powerful Japanese forces in the operational area. This meant that though Kinkaid had in 7th Fleet a significant number of ship-board planes, his most reliable concentrated air support was in fact the three Medium Carriers and three Light Carriers of the SI Pacific Fleet, on standby some 250 kilometres east of Leyte as a separate unit from the US fleets and task groups.

A US submarine pair, _Darter_ and _Dace_, were the first to make contact. At 0016 on April 23, _Darter_ made radar contact at 27000 meters and the two subs began to move in pursuit. The captain of the Darter made three contact reports in all, but even though radio operators on the _Yamato_ picked up at least one, Kurita still failed to take appropriate anti-submarine measures. At first light, 0524, having taken up position ahead of the Japanese, the two subs made a submerged attack. The _Darter_ fired a spread of six 533mm torpedoes, at least four of which hit Kurita's flagship, the heavy cruiser _Atago_, then made a quick turn port to fire its stern tubes at the _Takao_, one of the _Atago_'s sister ships. At 5:56, another such heavy cruiser of the same class, the _Maya_, was sunk by _Dace_ with four hits. The Americans had gotten their hands on a better torpedo series starting in early 1944, and it was working very well.

Kurita had to swim to survive, so rapidly had the _Atago_ sunk, and watched the carnage from the deck of the destroyer that picked him up before being transferred to the _Yamato_. The _Maya_ only took a mere four minutes to sink. Needless to say, with his heavy cruiser strength down by a third already (the _Takao_ limped toward Brunei with two destroyers as escorts, while the US subs stayed where they were to ambush them again if possible while they headed home) and over half his staff dead or wounded, Kurita was feeling rather glum.

He was right to feel glum, for though Halsey was in a poor position to strike at him their coordinated waves of attacks still managed to sink the battleship _Nagato_ and damage the _Yamato_. Several other cruisers were also sunk or damaged, along with some destroyers. However, the Japanese land-based planes from Luzon had managed to force the Americans to scuttle the light carrier _Princeton_ with a kamikaze attack. Halsey had also given a rather poorly worded message to Nimitz and the other US Admirals that managed to confuse the American efforts and nearly resulted in disaster.

It wasn't until 24 October that Ozawa's northern force was detected and Halsey withdrew all of his ships, not so much as leaving a picket destroyer at San Bernardino Strait, when Kinkaid and Nimitz both thought Task Force 34, with fast battleships and heavy carrier support, had already been formed as a separate entity and left there. This was as Kinkaid was mostly focused on dealing with Nishimura's battle group as they entered Surigao Strait. He'd stationed his Support Force, under Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf, in the strait, with six battleships, four heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, 28 destroyers and 39 torpedo boats. First contact was made by the PT boat screen at 2236 on October 24, however the night combat training of the Japanese allowed them to evade all damage and repel the PT boat attacks. Around 0300 on October 25, an hour after entering Surigao Strait, the destroyers began attacking en masse.

Both Japanese battleships present were hit by torpedoes, with the _Fuso_ catching fire and slowly settling on the bottom, despite the American claims to have blown it in half. Japanese fuel was at this point in the war of poor quality and prone to catching fire, hence it appeared _Fuso_ was going up when in fact it was just settling slowly. The rest of the Japanese group was pulverized utterly by the battle line Oldendorf had set up of battleships and cruisers. Shima's force from Taiwan was turned back when they encountered the battered survivors of Nishimura's shattered force.

It was in the wake of that crushing defeat that Kurita's force emerged from San Bernardino Strait at 0300 on October 25 and steamed south along the coast of Samar. It had three battleships left, including the _Yamato_, four heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and 11 destroyers. Hannah's air recon detected this force just in time to get a warning to Sprague's Taffy 3 escort carrier group to "RUN SOUTH, HEAVY JAPANESE UNITS SIGHTED BY AIR RECON JUST EAST OF SAMAR, STEAMING SOUTH TOWARD YOU!"

Unfortunately, Sprague had to by procedure check it with his own recon planes, even though he'd turned south at maximum speed, his escort carriers were still small and slow. They were nothing like the SI "escort carriers" which could pull up to 40-44 knots straight-line with relative ease in anything but very heavy seas. Sprague didn't like that fact, nor did he like how he only had four destroyer escorts and three destroyers as his screen. None were armoured and all were only lightly armed, if one was not counting torpedoes, they simply could not threaten capital ships at all.

Kurita, on the other hand, believed the enemy he found at 0630 hours to be "a gigantic enemy task force including many large carriers, cruisers and destroyers, perhaps even a battleship or two". He was hardly correct, and it would not be for another two hours before he was anything really close to correct in his assessment (at least, cruiser-wise).

Sprague however still reacted with speed fitting of his rank, launching all the planes he'd recently had armed and ranged up on deck in case Hannah was right, and heading for a nearby rain squall. A moment later, he sent a plain-language radio call for help. It took a few moments for Kurita to attack, and when he did, the destroyer _USS__Johnston_, closest to the enemy, turned by its own initiative and headed for the overwhelming foe at flank speed. Seeing this, Sprague ordered "Small boys attack!" The seven hopelessly outclassed, unarmoured warships charged the enemy with all guns and torpedo tubes blazing. Sprague's escort carriers manoeuvred as best they could to throw off the aim of the Japanese gunners bearing down on them with all the speed of a tank outrunning a glacier.

All the escort carrier groups were launching all aircraft available, and soon another plain-language radio message came over the radio sets "This is Generalissimo Hannah Shepard, I am engaging all 180 immediately available aircraft against the Japanese battleship force. Have dispatched four Destroyers, twelve Frigates, and eight attack submarines to support you, may God be with you. The ships will arrive in about two hours' time." Even at maximum speeds considerably greater than any contemporaries, it would still take time for the ships to arrive.

The swarming of torpedo-bombers, shrill shrieks of dive-bombers and chattering of machine-guns soon rose above the thundering of cannon fire as battle was joined by all sides. The American escorts fought valiantly and manoeuvred for all they were worth, but the last escort carrier, the _Gambier__Bay_, was still soon straddled by the 18-inch shells of the _Yamato_ and was sunk shortly thereafter. The destroyers and destroyer escorts raked their enemies furiously with gunfire, but their own un-armoured hulls took a severe beating as well. By 0800 four of the gutsy escorts had been sunk and the _White__Plains_ taken severe damage that disabled its flight deck but still allowed it to steam on. However the field of battle changed thoroughly at 0815 as shell splashes from medium-calibre naval guns began rising around the Japanese ships, scoring hits on them indiscriminately, penetrating their armour and starting fires. The promised help had arrived, at a time when the Japanese formation was severely disrupted by both the General Attack order and evasive manoeuvring against American torpedoes.

SI naval guns were engineered to maximize energy retention, in that the most modern shells were fired with discarding sabots and were long, spin-stabilized shells with a length-to-diameter ratio of about 4 to 1. This meant that the effective penetrator of a 300mm armour-piercing shell was only about 120mm across, but it packed a far, FAR greater wallop than other guns of similar calibre at long range. That, and the sabot design for the Frigates' 200mm shells, with a penetrator 80mm across, meant the Japanese heavy cruisers' armour didn't stand a chance of stopping the shells reliably. As for why the calibre was so large if the slug was so slim, there was one reason: high explosive shells to be fired in shore bombardment roles. Neither of these round types could penetrate actual battleships reliably at anything but point-blank range, but that didn't matter so much…

Kurita had just turned the Yamato _northwest_, AWAY from the battle, and the shell splashes around him only served to confirm his belief that he was engaging a major fleet unit, with Halsey's main striking forces coming to annihilate him. He thought he'd already inflicted major damage on a powerful American force that was now outrunning him, and that the transports at Leyte had mostly unloaded already (he was right on that count at least), it seemed absurd to sacrifice his country's last naval strike force for a bunch of empty transport boats. His fleet was disorganized from dodging so many torpedoes during his General Attack order, so he ordered "all ships, my course north, speed 20" to regroup. Getting reports of an American carrier force to his north, he decided to surprise and attack another enemy fleet instead of letting himself be outrun and destroyed by this southern force.

By the time the SI warships actually arrived on the scene, all they could do was shred the two Japanese destroyers and two cruisers that had been crippled by their shell fire and which were still trying to fight. Sailors of all sides were fished from the water by the warships even as the new arrivals helped fight off the screaming clouds of kamikaze aircraft. Unlike the 20mm AA guns the US also used alongside their own 40s, SI warships were fitted with no guns under 40mm (other than rifles for the men) and a 900g shell, with over half of it high explosive, was enough to tear a plane completely apart unlike a 20mm shell, which would typically leave the plane to crash. The radar guidance on the flak, plus a reasonably high firing rate despite the large calibre, coupled with gunners firing independently against most in-close targets, meant that none of the kamikazes managed to hit an SI warship directly…

This was assuming clipping a radio antenna off with half a blazing, sheared-off wing didn't count, since that happened to one Destroyer, which promptly raised one of the many spare antennae which was telescoped (into itself) along the sides of the bridge. The main high-powered antenna could be replaced later, when not in active combat… The return fire from the Japanese had put a big hole another Destroyer's bow, but since the shell had been fired at very long range (the lucky hit had been scored at nearly 30 kilometres), and recent upgrades had traded the pure RHA for ceramic composite armour, the 16-inch shell hadn't been able to penetrate more than two of the bulkheads and was stopped by the plating of the main armoured Citadel of the ship. Fortunately for the SI warships, the Yamato's shells were so large that they could be picked up clearly on radar. Therefore they were dodged with good effect (one hit was scored at an oblique angle to the side of a Destroyer and only left a deep gouge) as the SI warships were manoeuvring at 32 knots (though the manoeuvring every minute or so to dodge the huge shells gave them lists) using their big, plentiful rudders and wide, squat, stable hulls. It had been suggested that hydroplanes be installed at a later overhaul to help stability even more, but right now there was no real need for it as manoeuvres at over 35 knots or so were a bit of an absurd concept.

The attacks subs tailing Kurita underwater, snorkelling in the relatively calm sea, managed to catch up to him enough to sink several more of his ships, including every last battleship except the _Yamato_, which they left alone on their operational orders. In the meantime, in the north, Ozawa was being pounded into the sea by Halsey, having chosen finally not to turn around once Hannah detached a combat group to assist Sprague. The Third Fleet's Battle Line, with greater firepower than the whole Imperial Japanese Navy by that point in the battle, exterminated Ozawa's force most thoroughly, sinking all ships but for a small handful of destroyers which managed to get away at high speed form the utter carnage.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf was a supreme success for the Allies. SI suffered few casualties, though one attack submarine and a couple of the frigates had to be put into dry-dock for repairs. The sub had run aground on a reef, then floated to the surface after popping all ballast, before limping back home on the surface. This was as it couldn't afford submerging again for fear of sinking thanks to its damaged hull. As for the Frigates… well, a gunnery duel isn't the best thing for keeping a ship fully intact, even if the ships were reasonably well-armoured or more than reasonably when it came to their main armoured citadels.

* * *

><p><em>Anzio, April 1946<em>

On April 22, 1946, at 0545 local time, the artillery opened fire. Forty minutes later they stopped, before the great counterattack of Allied forces from within the pocket began. By the end of the first day they had broken out and were pounding the Germans back. It was on the 25th that Clark ordered a turn to the left to be first in Rome. Truscott, in charge of the attack, was dumbfounded and tried to contact Clark, but failed. Dismayed, he contacted the only available Allied force he thought could cut off Route 6 in time to stop the 10th Army from slipping away.

This was, naturally, Gunter von Esling's eight Divisions (Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Divisions had been trained over the winter and recently arrived on the Front), and the Canadian German's eyes nearly bulged out of his skull. Next came a fire behind the 37-year-old man's eyes as he snarled wordlessly under his breath, this was going too far… WAY too far… "This is General Gunter von Esling speaking, all elements of SI units in the field are to follow me effective immediately." He cut to Second Division's channel, with a smaller broadcast power to help radio stealth a bit, though he knew it wouldn't do too much, other than maybe slow the intel report from reaching Kesselring too fast "Second through Eight Divisions, we move out now, bearing 350." As they were camping out at Campobasso, this meant they were going for Ortona… again. Kesselring had moved his units about to counter the Allied pushes near Cassino, and the Anzio perimeter, so the Ortona end of things wasn't as heavily fortified as before.

The Germans nearly panicked as they had nothing able to move fast enough to counter the SI units, and hardly enough time to even dig in at Ortona. The interesting thing was that von Esling had no intention of breaking the Gustav Line at Ortona, he thundered across the foothills southwest of Ortona instead of following the coastal highways. He hit Pescara, overran the German units along his path, then pressed two Allied divisions who'd tagged along as support into work suppressing the Ortona pocket after pouring, using his 864 howitzers, and 40 rocket artillery pieces (5 per Assault Armour Brigade), over 100,000 shells at moderate firing rate (6 per minute per gun) and some 8000 rockets (40 launched per volley per launcher, 5 minute reload) over 20 minutes of non-stop firing while the main assault groups, namely the APCs and tanks, took a short "break" after totally rupturing the Gustav Line. During the breaking of the line the artillery and truck crews were sort of taking a break, so… now they were either shooting at the Germans or ferrying Allied troops into the circumvallation and contravallation. The tank and APC squadrons that had not been fully committed in the battle were responsible for metastasizing the SI presence throughout the area, rooting out German strongholds (including use of flamethrowers, as Gunter had elevated things to DEFCON 2) and annihilating regrouping German columns, though surrenders were, as usual, ferried to processing centers set up and protected behind friendly lines by Logistics Brigades which also dealt with escorting supply convoys and such with armoured forces.

It took a total of 30 minutes before the SI troops moved out from the new positions after regrouping slightly, since organization beneath battalion level was completely hashed up in the organized chaos of a mass of tanks pushing forward. Then they thundered down Route 5 toward Rome, cutting into the Caesar C defence line from the side and with their air support heavily strafing the Rome Switch Line which was further north. The 160 kilometres of the trip took the 5400-some tanks (some were left with the Aviation Brigades), with even more APCs and somewhat fewer trucks, a mere six hours to cover, with most spent at standard combat speed but sometimes slowing down. The latter two vehicle types were employed in supply, fire support, and skirmisher roles while the main battle tanks (a term coined by Gunter for the tanks designed to make the main offensive and commit to battle in large numbers) pushed forward. In sheets of flame (about a half of the tanks had the flamethrower for their secondary weapon), thundering of cannon and chattering of machine-guns they plunged through the mountainous terrain. Radio stations were silenced by roving bands of APCs and trucks, severing antennae with accurate sniper fire, be it by rifle or by 40mm cannon, and shooting up the enemy's rear. There was very little German armour on Route 5 and what was there was dealt with by truck mortars or Ram rocket launchers, or, if they were unlucky enough to survive until the main columns came by, buried under a hail of 95mm cannon shells.

As for the main advance, they were using their dozer blades to maintain the advantage that was manoeuvring in defilade… or the advantage of rolling large rocks down hills into enemy defensive positions. Against infantry, it produced enough (and messy enough) results to be supremely effective, and was effective against any other unarmoured units, partly due to psychological impact. Hence, it did not take as long as it theoretically could have to get to Rome and slash across all German units south of the city. Three divisions, the Second, Third and Fourth, deployed themselves in hull-down concave formations behind dirt ramparts they dug out themselves southeast of the city while the other five, 80,000 men and women in all (their aviation brigades were based near Campobasso still), battered their way into the city. The local Italian partisans rose up en masse and helped speed the thorough rout of the German units from the city that had begun as an orderly retreat on Hitler's orders. The man had ordered that to avoid another Battle of London, there would be no last stand defence of Rome, hence the German positions had begun the relatively sudden battle shaky at best.

* * *

><p><em>Rome, April 27-28, 1946<em>

Hastily erected fortifications and trenches were knocked down or buried in mere moments by the massive armoured columns stampeding over them, and Gunter, following the SI tradition of "double or nothing" offensives managed to nominally secure the city within a day. To facilitate the destruction of German pockets of resistance in the city, Gunter left most of his Motorized Infantry (five of eight Brigades) in the city while the Armoured and Mechanized units moved out. Those affiliated with Second and Third Divisions were covering the northern and western approaches of the city, entrenching themselves and deploying their artillery and rocket artillery in heavily guarded squares inside the city. The rest of the armoured units, numbering three Assault Armour Brigades and three Mechanized Brigades, headed southeast to blaze a trail along Route 6.

Needless to say, Clark was pretty surprised… and pretty damned angry, when the Germans along Route 7 simply surrendered as they ran headlong into one Armoured Brigade (the common name for Assault Armour Brigade), one Mechanized Brigade and one Motorized Brigade left to stop them with a bit over 600 tanks and their Brigade-level fire support and auxiliary units. Panzerfaust rockets were of little effect thanks to the appliqué armour solution and entrenchments of the vehicles, and even the King Tigers, what few still survived, couldn't get through the thick plating before being themselves shredded by an overwhelming hail of 95mm rounds. The numerical advantage and superior protection were the deciding factors, as though the SI units had a chronic shortage of infantry, it did not matter in an open field battle.

The kill-to-death ratio for SI here was a very good 200 to 1, and the kill-to-casualty ratio was 150-to-1 (casualties counted dead AND wounded), because they only opened fire on the haggard, unorganized, unsuspecting Germans when they were at a range of 800 meters. This was within the 1000m effective range of the A-WTC-95-60B against King Tigers but outside the 200 meter effective envelope of the 100mm cannon of their adversary against Raider IIs with appliqué armour. Yes, it was true that the 100mm cannon COULD punch through appliqué and main armour, but it literally had to be at point-blank range to do so. On the other hand, if no appliqué armour was present, King Tigers were capable of killing Raider II Tanks at 400 meters and the original Raider Tanks at 600. Every other Allied tank could be killed at upward of one kilometre… a testament to the innovation SI strongly encourages among its scientists.

Of course, there were some R&D blunders that were made along the way, including an attempt to develop missiles which could, like aircraft, cruise within the atmosphere to their targets before diving down. The precision SI demanded of its products simply didn't work out with current technology. Hannah wanted accuracy within 0.4% range of the target for anything she fielded… the missiles could barely deliver 2% before the project was scrapped, after spending nearly three million dollars. The scientists involved were shifted over to the aeronautics division, though they were still allowed to do research (and request machine parts) in their spare time if they wanted to pull extra hours.

SI's R&D operated fairly close to manufacturing plants, so a handful stayed after standard lab hours each day to do more work, even though they were only given half of the usual pay rate, as they were doing "Non-Standard Overtime". Normally, overtime pay, meaning more than 2 hours more work done than usual, was at an hourly rate that was 1.5 times the usual rate (they were paid per day, for 8.5-hour work days, counting the half hour for mealtimes, so an average rate of pay was calculated and used to determine the overtime rate). Non-Standard Overtime got only 50% pay, though parts and requisitioning was, as usual, essentially free so long as the parts stayed within a generous budget. Of course, it was only generous because the parts were cheap, thanks to being manufactured practically next door and not being sold between companies. It was a way to encourage true fanatics to keep working.

There was also the fact that lazing around at work (other than at mealtimes) was not tolerated, which increased efficiency significantly, but that was another matter. What really mattered were the results produced, as evidenced by absolute armoured and fire support superiority against SI's opponents. Certainly the new V-F-1946s were proving more than adequate in all roles, the 1945s had been delayed far enough in development to consider new possibilities i.e. air-to-ground rocket pods that they'd just been renamed the 1946 to fit the year. Both along Route 7 and Route 6, the Germans were being, well, routed by the punishment they were taking, and nine whole divisions of Tenth Army were bottled up in the Liri river valley, along Route 6, by less than half their number of SI troops, and pounded into submission. In the end, some 100,000 German soldiers surrendered on Route 6 to Gunter's forces. The only problem was what to do with them, maybe put them out for harvest work back in Canada? But there was the risk of sabotage… ah well, there wasn't much else they could do, the available factories were all fully staffed by prisoners already. That meant the ones producing stuff for Canada's allies were staffed, SI factories producing stuff for itself employed no POWs.

There was a rather terse situation on Route 7, where the local commanders of the Allied armies, which had just met up, were arranging for the German prisoners to be transported toward Naples via the American supply lines. The SI route of advance, Route 5, had already been cut by more retreating German forces, though Gunter had more than enough fuel and ammunition to plough his way back through, Genghis Khan style, if he wanted, he wasn't going to. He needed to make sure Clark didn't do anything stupid. That was why the American general was fuming, being locked outside the gates of Rome, as Gunter held a press conference on the steps of the Town Hall. Von Esling carefully avoided his opinion of Clark during the press conference, but stated that he thought the US Army turning northwest was decidedly foolish strategically and that they should have put more effort into making Route 6 an impassable gauntlet.

The SI forces left Rome soon after the Allies caught up and took over the entire line along Route 5. None of the other Allies knew where they were going, but knew that something decisive was afoot as the eight divisions, with all their other forces, left Taranto on May 1, 1946 and vanished over the horizon. They had handed over responsibility for their areas of Italy to the British, as Gunter's opinion of the Americans was, after Clark's fuck-up, not exactly great.

* * *

><p><em>England, May 1946<em>

Hannah sighed as she rubbed her temples. Here was the telltale difference between her harshly trained, well-disciplined but also rowdy and brotherly troops and the three weeks training the US and British infantrymen had got. Her troops' current five-month training regimen (the first 3 divisions had originally had 3.5 months training, but lots of real experience) taught them not how to march in rank and file with synchronized steps or to salute properly, but how to slither through underbrush, defuse mines, plant explosives, dig foxholes quickly, and be good marksmen. They were also taught basic tactics, even the Servicemen, the lowest rank. All had been trained with vehicles, at least land vehicles, since SI vehicles' drive systems were all fairly simple and fairly uniform, and they at least had some experience with swimming rivers in the vehicles that could do it, in addition to use of dozer blades. All this combined to them performing well in the amphibious landing exercises they were running in preparation for Overlord, an operation she'd helped mastermind, whereas her Allies…

Well…

Uh…

…

…

…Maybe it would be best not to speak of just how abysmally the exercises went at the beginning with units from the other Allied nations. First Division had practically been run ragged teaching the British and American Army units just how to do things properly (the US Marines present were also being run ragged). It had literally been three months since they'd had a break now, and Hannah was just glad that the other divisions were due to arrive soon, sometime today if they weren't horribly off-schedule.

Her phone rang and she picked up "Hannah, we've arrived and are off-loading, expect us to arrive at the training areas within the next six hours, Gunter von Esling out."

"Alright, Gunter, welcome to Overlord."

* * *

><p><em>English Channel, June 4, 1946<em>

Gunter sighed as he watched his Generalissimo give the go-ahead to Operation Overlord despite poor weather conditions and the insanity of doing it at this time of the month "You REALLY have a thing for 666, don't you?"

She smirked at him "But of course… they said it was a man's number… they were wrong." Hannah winked mischievously at that.

Gunter and her were watching was deemed the most epic battleship in existence, the _Dawn_, formerly the _Musashi_, leaving port. Hannah had once wanted to reserve the ship for Operation: Tyrannic, but decided against it, since it had been modified so extensively that it would no longer be immediately recognized even if she stuck it smack-dab in Tokyo Bay. The hull was rebuilt to be wider for stability, though retaining the rigidity properties of the original construction, the bow and stern were shortened, the engines were completely replaced, the armour protection was concentrated more, with lots more sealed compartments, and torpedo skirt armour had been added.

As for the guns, the main battery was still the nine 18-inch monsters that had come with the ship, but the super-firing secondary battery had been removed to save weight. Instead, the three 5-inch flak gun turrets on each side had, with the widening rebuild, been replaced by two double 200mm turrets, in S-WM-45B mounts, per side. The AA armament was replaced by masses of dual 40mm gun turrets lined up evenly along the superstructure's perimeter, and quite a few of the same "small" S-WM-15B (yes, the mount design had been improved to the B model…) mounts featured turrets for smoke-screen mortars. The superstructure was shaved down to a fraction of the original height to minimize profile and weight, so as to help with the armour and stability increases, and several torpedo tubes were installed. It would have been fun to match it up directly against the _Yamato_, but it would be even more fun if they could "acquire" the other super-battleship too… Hannah blotted that from her thoughts for now as she monitored the situation. Soon afterward, reports started coming in about the gliders and paratroopers being readied for battle.

Fortunately, they were about to see the might of the battleship tested. It, along with four other Allied warships, two from the Royal Navy, one from the US Navy, and one from the French Government-In-Exile, were going out to hunt down and sink the biggest warship ever launched in Europe, the _Tirpitz_. Intelligence reports had the ship being transferred from Brest to Kiel under heavy fighter escort, and everyone was determined that it would never reach its target. Since an air attack could potentially yield captives for the Germans to figure out Overlord, it was decided that a battleship duel would be the weapon of choice to deal with the last remaining surface capital ship of Germany (bombing the shipyards repeatedly ensured no more entered the water). The only reason Hannah agreed was because Admiral Williams had specifically asked her to combat test the new radar targeting system of the _Dawn_.

The _Tirpitz_ fired first, a salvo of eight shells thrown at the British battleship _Duke__of__York_, one of the King George V class, which had, along with the rest of the Allied warships, steamed ahead instead of waiting for the _Dawn_ to rendezvous with them. This was as the window for the operation was closing rapidly and the _Dawn_ was a bit too far from the location (thanks to faulty intelligence data) to assure the most favourable engagement conditions. The captain of the French battleship involved had voiced some concerns about the wisdom of such a move, but followed them anyhow, since after all they had a four to one numerical advantage. The Tirpitz's shell splashes rose rather short of the target

Unfortunately, the _Duke__of__York_'s two 4-gun turrets both experienced technical difficulties, in the bow turret, the anti-flash mechanism jammed the entire turret into place and in the other one gun jammed. So the first return salvo from that battleship was a mere 5 14-inch shells, which missed. Then the _Nelson_, sister ship to the sunken _Rodney_, opened fire with a broadside of 16-inch shells. Contrary to popular belief, the _Nelson_-class was in fact able to fire a full broadside without structural damage, but by doing so the warship's guns faced the wind coming from the south while it was steaming east on a parallel but converging course with the _Tirpitz_… The 41000-ton battleship reeled from the recoil as the guns' terrible blast stirred up the waters off its starboard side. The French battleship _Richelieu_ and American battleship _California_—the latter refloated and repaired after Pearl Harbour—fired next, a volley of eight 15-inch shells and 12 14-inch shells respectively.

Fortunately for the _Tirpitz_, its captain had ordered a hard turn to starboard toward a diverging course, and thus the Allied shells failed to score hits other than two 14-inch shells from the _California_ bouncing off the belt armour as they struck at a rather oblique angle. However, the _Richelieu_ was beginning to catch up, taking advantage of its two quad turrets ahead of the superstructure to pursue its foe. Its eight shells had failed to hit as the two guns per half turret were so close together their shells had a wake effect and dispersed each other. It took only a moment for the captain to remember the experience he'd gained from the captain of another ship of the same class during an action half the Scilly Armada had been in, and ordered that the turrets alternate even and odd guns firing. Namely, this meant that the wake effect was nullified, greatly helping accuracy as it punched two holes into the stern of the _Tirpitz_ while itself receiving a shell to the superstructure. Needless to say, the whole crew (minus the dead and wounded) were very relieved that their allies (i.e. a certain PMC) insisted on installing a number of back-ups to every system and moving the Combat Information Center into the citadel of the ship.

The _Tirpitz_ swung hard to port to bring its forward guns to bear, firing as soon as they could. It caught the _Nelson_ at its most vulnerable moment, as the ship's tall superstructure caught the wind enough to, with the recoil of the main battery firing again, tip the ship far enough to port that the angled armour belt inside the ship was above the trajectory of the incoming rounds. 41000 tons of battleship went up in a towering mushroom cloud, snapping in half and settling fast, as its magazines were penetrated cleanly and all its main armament ammunition went up at once.

The _California_, following in line after the sinking _Nelson_, almost ran into the ship but turned to starboard hard enough to only scrape its side and leave a shallow scar on its own flank, but the bump spoiled the aim enough that the next volley again mostly missed the German battleship. However, it had successfully put one of the German rangefinders out of service with a pair of 14-inch shells. As for the _Duke__of__York_, well, it punched a hole into the _Tirpitz_ near the bow, and so the German battleship began taking on water and leaking fuel oil.

The German ship had turned around to present its broadside, and so that its forward rangefinder could serve all its guns. The next volley fired disabled one of the two turrets of the _Richelieu_, by jamming it, but not before the Allied battleship got its own volley off. That disabled two of the secondary turrets on the port side of the _Tirpitz_, smashing them completely and damaging the superstructure. However, the _Richelieu_ had to peel off the attack or it would be dangerously close to an enemy that outgunned and out-armoured it. The _Tirpitz_ took several more shells from the other two battleships before it reduced the battery of the _Duke__of__York_ to three traversable guns, with its own main battery down to six guns and being pounded by the twelve 14-inch guns of the _California_, which had finally found the range and was now scoring proper straddles. Both sides were sustaining damage steadily, though the Allies had the clear upper hand with a grand total of 19 guns versus the Tirpitz' six, until another signature registered on the radar of both sides.

It was the _Dawn_, steaming into battle at 35 knots, with all six big propellers and nine engines (it had been heavily modified since its _Musashi_ days) churning furiously to push the 80,000 tons (fully loaded weight) of composite armour, firepower and endurance into action. The _Tirpitz_, which was already beginning to waver, didn't stand a chance as soon as the _Dawn_ found the range. The heaviest battleship launched by a European power would meet the heaviest battleship in history… and the battle was long decided before it began, not only from battle damage to the German ship but also overwhelming superiority for the captured warship. With the second salvo of its 18-inch guns, it disabled two more of the _Tirpitz_'s main turrets, the _Dawn_ was using SI-built shells, only weighing one ton each, with a sabot mechanism for superior armour penetration using a thinner, longer slug. It had originally outranged all the other battleships present by at least several kilometres (at a max range of 37 km)… now it outranged them by nearly 12 kilometres as the turrets had been heavily modified to allow for higher gun elevation, up to 44 degrees. At 42 kilometres and closing, the ship fired again.

The armour-piercing shells smashed into the _Tirpitz_, the guns having found the range, well, five of nine shells at least. The last rangefinders (including the backup) were blown sky-high and the last of the main battery was broken by the volley, the turrets completely jamming from the hits. There was a momentary lull in the fighting as the Allied ships reloaded with the _Dawn_'s commander, one Captain Hackett, asking the _California_ to hold fire. Then he sent out a plain language radio call across all frequencies as they closed the range on the crippled German warship which they could handily outrun. "This is Captain Hackett of the _Dawn_, stand down, _Tirpitz_, I do not want to cause any unnecessary loss of life. Surrender and we will pick up all your crew members, they will be treated fairly, as regular POWs, under SI's rules."

It would be many, many years later that his distant descendant would make the same sort of demand over a planet far, far away, named Shanxi, and they would get almost the exact same response.

The German battlewagon, outweighed by some 30,000 tons, fired its secondary guns in defiance and knocked one of the _California_'s secondary guns out of action. The American battleship had been the target as it was closer, and the US sailors immediately replied with a full volley at point-blank, all shells hitting other than one from the Y (rearmost) turret. It had missed as the part it would have hit was torn away by the explosion of another shell, fired a mere moment earlier from the X turret (the super-firing rear turret).

The _Dawn_ fired next, punching into and through the _Tirpitz_'s armour belt with six slugs fired at point-blank. The B turret's guns, being a bit higher up than the A and C turrets (SI worked unconventionally, including use of ABCD coding instead of that used for other warships for turrets) smashed into the superstructure of the lighter warship and blew up inside. Within two volleys fired, the German warship was dead in the water and men were jumping overboard, to be picked up by the boats the Allied warships lowered (destroyers were picking up survivors from the _Nelson_) for them. The _Tirpitz_ slowly rolled to port and sank, after essentially everyone still alive was taken off. As a final salute, the _Dawn_ fired a full volley of blank charges, no shells, as the hull of the heaviest European-launched battleship finally disappeared in the red sunset, before it turned and headed for Portsmouth, in company with the California and some British destroyers. The _Richelieu_ and _Duke__of__York_ had headed home for repairs long ago, since they were damaged far worse than the _California_ and the _Dawn_.

* * *

><p><em>English Channel Region, June 5-onward, 1946<em>

In the falling night, the planes began to lift off, escorted by a massive screen of fighters and with bombers for support. By one o'clock in the morning both Gunter and Hannah were, if not well rested, at least rested and ready to help coordinate the disparate parts of the greatest amphibious assault yet seen by human eyes. In the pre-dawn darkness, at 0159 hours, everything was set, and radio silence was broken by a single plain-language command after Admiral Ramsay handed her the microphone, to "do the honours": "This is Generalissimo Hannah Shepard, Authorization Code: The night is long that never finds the day."

At 0200 minus two seconds, as planned, the _Dawn_ opened fire first of all 40-some battleships, followed two seconds later by all the rest of the great ships, a massive volley of high-explosive shells whistling through the night toward the enemy. The next ships to fire, starting at 0200 plus 15 seconds, were the handful of SI Destroyers, followed by SI Frigates and the cruisers of the other Allies, and finally at 0200 plus 30 seconds the SI corvettes opened up with everyone else's destroyers. The shells hit almost in sync, blasting German positions hard with a deluge of destruction while hundreds of heavy bombers carpeted the landing zones with countless bombs. Mines went up from the sheer concussions of exploding bombs and the underwater ones were dealt with by minesweeper gear fitted to Corvettes, using their shallow draft and good armour plating to endure hostile fire.

There wasn't much hostile fire, since of all times when Hannah could have chosen to invade, she chose a First Quarter moon. In addition to the neap tide being bad for most landing craft, the First Quarter moon set at about MIDNIGHT! In other words, the operation, except for the paratroopers who'd dropped earlier around 10 PM, was in near-total darkness. As Eisenhower and Ramsay said, "only a lunatic would launch a massed invasion under such conditions… but it might just be crazy enough to achieve total surprise". And so it did. The Germans, even with intelligence leaks by spies (the discovered ones were hunted down and dealt with by the Allies) didn't believe it possible, hence Rommel had taken leave to celebrate his wife's birthday, and the other major officers were at war games. Hitler himself was not awakened even with reports of paratroopers, since the guards thought the report was insane, who would parachute in the momentary calm between the stormy clouds scattered all over northern France?

A good distance away from the beachheads, the Allied infantrymen stood in their landing craft, quiet and awaiting orders to proceed. Their lookouts reported massive sheets of cannon and flamethrower fire ashore, with the occasional pyres of tanks cooking off rocketing into the sky before crashing back down. They waited in terse silence, until the second authorization code came through near dawn "Come what, come may, light and the hour run through the thickest day." Then their landing craft engines rumbled and they moved forward, many watching enviously as SI corvettes unloaded their dive-capable APCs into the water on the shallow shelf of the beach. As it was currently a high tide they made it over the obstacles, using the paths cleared by Raider II and Raider I tanks of the Allies to get past tricky spots and land the men near the beach. The tanks had come ashore en masse and opened fire on a signal at all the German lights they could see, which meant most of the defences had been taken care of quickly.

Machine-gun fire stabbed out at them, but the nests were taken care of quickly by the APC support SI's nine divisions were currently providing. Now the tide of tanks emerging from the sea was all Raider I's, but they still provided a fearsome amount of fire support from hundreds of 95mm cannons. Even SI's production methods hadn't been enough to replace all 6500-some tanks from the nine divisions with Raider IIs, so Raider Is had also been among the first units ashore in the pre-dawn darkness. The Allied infantry coming ashore with armour coverage were greeted with the burnt-out husks of many German vehicles, a handful of Raider Is, and a few scattered Raider II wrecks as they came ashore. The wrecked SI tanks were mostly mangled into near-unrecognizable states, since the Germans did their best to make sure the things were down for good, and appliqué armour made confirming a kill without shredding the target difficult. While 160,000 men and most of the naval support were contributed by the Allies, SI had 188,000 soldiers (9 divisions plus 2 Logistics Brigades) and about 10,000 sailors committed to the battle, hence the landings essentially had offensive operational command under Hannah and Gunter. Defensive operational command, however, still stayed with the Allies, as well as the responsibility of getting reinforcements.

SI First and Second Division (dubbed SI First Armoured and SI Second Armoured by their allies) were blazing a trail (often literally, thanks to half the Raider IIs fitting flamethrowers as their secondary weapon) inland to Caen from Sword Beach. They surrounded the city and forming two defence lines before calling their divisional Aviation Brigades for more close air support flown from the Dover region. It would only take a few moments to arrive as the planes had been all loaded out and parked in contingents on the airfields, ready to launch on call. There was also the fact that they'd lifted off as soon as news was received that the ground units were approaching Caen, so as soon as the ground troops gave targets the bombers rained down bombs on the targets. As for the more hardened targets, they were dealt with via 400kg armour-piercing bombs, like the artillery batteries overrun earlier after bombing. Those had proved empty and the guns had been removed before the invasion, but they were still a tactically critical objective as they could be used by spotters.

Juno Beach's two divisions worth of armoured support took significant punishment (3 Raider IIs disabled, 2 destroyed, 5 Raider Is disabled and 6 destroyed) from the two heavy batteries of 155mm guns, while the 9 batteries of 75mm guns did essentially nothing except act as distractions. Speed allowed most of the artillery fire to be dodged long enough for the batteries to be neutralized by airstrikes or being overrun by the armoured units. By the end of the day, the armoured units had reached far inland and spread out, beginning to consolidate their territory and achieving link-up with the other beachheads. West of them, at Gold Beach, the British forces were battling through a seaside village that had been fortified by the Germans, as well as sending a commando contingent to attack Port en Bessin from the rear, to achieve a good supply foothold. After all, the concrete block piers the SI ships were laying out were still somewhat limited in their supply capacity.

At Omaha, the seawall was half the height it was at Juno, but the large number of German fortifications resulted in over two dozen wrecked tanks, all Raider Is, since Hannah had disagreed with landing on that beach and so the British had to give the Americans armoured support for it. The beachhead was almost a disaster, and would have been if not for the ad hoc groups the American infantry formed, scaling the cliffs and clearing bunkers through a supreme show of courage. For once, the SI support surging east from Utah, two full divisions' worth of land forces (32000 men, about 1450 tanks, as aviation brigades were left in Britain), representing the Seventh and Eight Divisions, were late to the scene and by the time they'd arrived the US troops had already made it over the seawall. The main reason they were late was their relief of the Rangers at Pointe du Hoc, duelling it out with counterattacking German units and blowing the emplacements with jury-rigged demolition charges. These had been obtained by landing bombers on a nearby road after it was secured and offloading their bombs before rigging them into the right places (often using smaller charges to dig out the holes for the larger ones) to bring the position down. By nightfall on June 6, all initial objectives had been accomplished, quite a few of which were achieved only by a systematic sweep of a tide of armoured units, spearheaded by the divisions SI committed to battle. Sure, it left essentially scorched earth (excluding towns) in its wake, but it got the job done with minimal collateral damage

Despite disagreements, the Allies agreed on basic strategy courtesy of a properly organized high command, whereas the Germans were tied down by Hitler's strategic incompetence. Certainly the man had occasional sparks of inspiration, but he was still a strategic idiot. The landings had been unbelievably successful, and the first major counterattack, on July 7, was not even under Rommel's command.

It was the 21st and 12th SS Hitler Youth Panzer Divisions, and it was an utter disaster for the Germans, not in the least because of the reputation the units had for brutality and war crimes and the barbarism they displayed toward any Allied prisoners. After the first report of the heads of Allied prisoners mounted on pikes (improvised with long sticks) on D-day plus 2 i.e. June 8, Gunter vectored Third through Seventh divisions to surround and annihilate the SS units, no prisoners, none whatsoever, were shipped away to Canada. Instead, Extermination Order Number One was enforced by all Allied combatants, and since there were no Wehrmacht men around to vouch for what few prisoners were taken, well… The Allies didn't even deign to waste ammunition, they used tank treads and bayonets instead, after dragging the few SS animals taken alive in front of the rows of pikes that they themselves had set up. The entire process, starting with the sightings of the first beheaded Allied prisoners and ending with the execution of the few SS prisoners in front of the monuments to their sins, was recorded on video. However, it was not broadcast widely, as the Propaganda Department determined that the war exhaustion at home would mean a negative impact on SI's reputation.

Hannah slipped command of SI's portion of Overlord to Gunter on June 13, after the beachhead was secure, and returned to Britain for a conference. She knew how good Gunter was, probably slightly better than even Rommel. With a good command chain, lots of discretion, and better soldiers with better equipment, she believed it would be no problem. The problem was what to do with Germany once it was defeated, since obviously it would need a self-defence type army in case the neighbours decided to come looking for revenge and get too greedy.

The London Conference, from June 15 to June 18, managed to divvy up the occupation zones of Germany as well as establish what to do for a supreme commander of the German Military after the war was over. The main Allied factions, America, Britain, SI/Canada, and the French GIE signed an agreement that the Supreme German Commander after the war would be chosen from the candidates put forth by each faction via a referendum of the entire population of Germany. Each faction could put forth as many candidates as it wanted, but each had to put forth at least one. Truman, though not as SI-friendly as Roosevelt had been, still agreed, probably as the other major leaders, except Hannah, were glaring him down after he'd argued for a while against it. Apparently the others felt it was a good proposition and probably the best possible solution if they wanted Germany to act as any sort of bulwark against communism from the USSR. Hannah didn't show anything, but once she was done with the conference, as she left, she smirked, knowing exactly who she would put forth and knowing that he had the greatest chance of winning the referendum as long as all sides supervised the ballot-counting and such.

After all, she'd weaselled out of Gunter that "Germans like to be led by smart people, but they like being led by Germans even more." Gunter fit both of those categories, and with his skills displayed in the European theatre repeatedly for all to see and fair treatment of POWs, who would be returned to Germany and participate in the referendum, it should be fairly easy. The other Allied leaders no doubt knew that Gunter had the greatest chance of winning, but since popular opinion of the man was higher than even Auchinleck (now reassigned CINC South Asia) they could hardly say no to him, besides, he was good at what he did, so they could trust him to hold down the fort on his side in cooperation with the occupation forces.

* * *

><p>AN: Random blathering here before the good stuff near the end…

I was slow these days as I finally got a good laptop able to play Mass Effect without lag, so I'm doing my first run-through of the game. I know, fail on my part… Something I noticed was that leaving the Citadel right away for Therum before finishing any quests other than Citadel: Homecoming is stupid as it's hard to net enough morality even with Spacer-War Hero to allow me enough Charm to deal with the Rear Admiral in Snap Inspection which happens as soon as you come back. Still, what I realized after reading the Asari codex entries is that the electronic democracy that the Asari developed is not unlike the Cybran Nation. This is but for the fact that Cybrans are far more in tune with technology, being semi-technological themselves. I'll go into this more when I go back to that series, but I have everything down already.

Note that I am burgeoning with ideas stored for the SupCom, ME, Halo, StarCraft, WarCraft, Pokémon, etc. Universe, at least regarding how things work, and what happens to the rest of the crew once Mama Shepard disappears for a while thanks to a certain time loop problem. By the way, my current ME 1 game is at Feros, and for the record, though this was not mentioned in my SupCom: ME series, if the Thorian was as widespread as the game tells me, Feros right now would still have a molten surface from the systematic strategic missile bombardment (four or five orders of magnitude worse than Korhal) it would have received to annihilate the Thorian once and for all. The Covenant would also have been contracted later to fully glass the planet down to a crust depth of two kilometres, even though the surface was already a sheet of glass. After all, all those tens of thousands of ships have to do one final live-fire weapons test before mothballing, right? In my fics, the Thorian is merely in one section… one section that was cleared out and nuked.

Anyhow, let's get back to THIS universe/timeline (as far as the Multiverse is concerned, it's in the past relative to that other one, then again, it does control/define time, so yeah…), yes, this eventual C&C one. There is no way in hell that SI won't find a way to get around the Farixen Naval Treaty. Also, you know the codex entry? "No sane commander would face a dreadnought with anything less than another dreadnought." Well, aren't we glad that SI completely lacks, always will lack, and has always lacked entirely sane commanders? I can't wait for the First Contact War revolutionized… I also can't wait to see what happens to the Batarian Syndicates after the Skyllian Blitz and later after the Reaper War. There is also another epically huge history behind this universe, Kane, Hannah, and the Asari/Quarians in this timeline, so stay tuned…

My updating will slow down considerably as I am entering a busy time, I will be very lucky if I can get one 10K chapter out per week, or probably two weeks, as I'd like to play ME through at least twice despite my free time being radically reduced. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it's not an atypical rate of updating as far as I can see, reckoning by other authors.

REVIEW!


	21. From Paris to the Bulge

A/N: IF YOU DIDN'T READ CLOSELY ENOUGH, the _Musashi_ was stolen EN ROUTE from Truk to Japan, and its group was under radio silence, it's not that they stole it in the middle of a harbour and sailed it out to sea‼‼

For the record, Anzio was written as was (to us) historically accurate, Lucas was too timid and Clark was glory-hunting. They got a hammer over the head from von Esling for it. Did you know that German engineers and scientists successfully designed an infrared lighting and sighting device by the end of our WWII? All of a sudden these technologies I have here look a lot less absurd…

Also, to all readers, though SI strives to be as accurate as possible in its archives, we regret to inform you that in some cases our writers enjoy deriding everyone else's strategic mistakes a bit too much.

* * *

><p>Chapter 21: From Paris to the Bulge<p>

(The first part is colloquially known as "Fuck You, Truman!")

_Normandy Region, June 15-20, 1946_

Now that Caen and Cherbourg were both secured, and Gunter had full operational command, with reinforcements and supplies bringing his units back to full strength, he could attack at will along the long front line. His biggest enemy was no doubt the terrain, the bocage landscape of narrow lanes, dense hedgerows, and small patches of woodland all over the place. Gunter tried to look for a solution that would be kind to the land, but found none, with no other option, he ordered all his units to be ready to plough their way through the countryside, literally. They used flamethrowers sparingly whenever the brush was too thick to plough through successfully without damaging their dozer blades, and within three days they had swept the main German forces in the area completely into the Falaise Pocket and handed holding duty to their allies, who were stretched rather thin despite one million tons of SI freighter shipping capacity being shifted to Overlord to assist with transportation of supplies and Allied troops.

Gunter ignored the complaints of other Allied generals that he was moving too fast, instead consulting his Logistics Brigades regarding their supply situation and finding it satisfactory. Falaise was, to Gunter, another chance for a mass surrender, good for both propaganda and his conscience, since despite being Canadian he didn't relish the thought of killing Germans en masse. That was why he told the Allies not to pound the pocket to dust, but instead merely surround it and prevent any breakouts while he attacked their hearts and minds with propaganda leaflets. These even had offers of dropping food if they should run out during the siege.

The other allies had no choice but to follow Gunter around, since he had by far the most powerful assault force currently available in France, and he was securing land so fast that the Allies could build up their forces with impunity. This was in addition to attracting almost all German units north so that the Operation Dragoon landings could be successful. Every side recognized one problem Gunter's force, and all SI forces, had: they relied on their allies to hold their rears too much, and if their supply lines were cut they would be forced to wheel back and run for friendly territory if they wanted to continue offensive operations, despite bringing excess supplies with them everywhere. However, after the Falaise entrapment, the Germans no longer had enough mobile forces to try to outflank Gunter…

Unfortunately the Germans attempted a breakout from the pocket, and the Allies were forced to pound them into the dirt until the final 50,000 or so surrendered. According to Eisenhower's diary "The battlefield at Falaise was unquestionably one of the greatest 'killing fields' of any of the war areas. Forty-eight hours after the surrender, I was conducted through it on foot, to encounter scenes that could be described only by Dante. It was literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh. British Army Raider Tanks ploughed the corpses of French civilians, German soldiers, and countless animals into great mountains of death while more Raider Is dug trenches which these mountains were toppled into and buried after a cursory counting of bodies. More often than not, it would be a counting of human torsos, as heads and limbs could be shredded off by artillery and bombs far too easily, especially for the French children caught in the pocket. I now truly understand why we all consider Gunter von Esling to be the best of us, why he instructed us specifically not to press the siege too far, and to only beat back breakout attempts."

On June 19, US President Harry S. Truman, true to his controlling nature which would be shown in the Korean War, attempted to interfere with military operations as he told Gunter "Paris is not a primary target, stopping the retreating German units is, please sweep southeast and meet up with the Dragoon forces. They will need your support to hold the Germans."

"Sorry sir, but I've already broadcast announcements and armed the mob, and the angle from here is better." Gunter replied simply via telegram before splitting his forces just outside Paris. The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth divisions, constituting 60,000 front-line troops now that the Aviation Brigades had come over the Channel, were led by Gunter himself toward Paris while the other six divisions thundered east through the fields around the city, followed leisurely by their allies forming a defensive front and the heavily armed/armoured Logistics Brigades shuttling their supplies. Five Logistics Brigades were now in France, though mostly the units themselves could take care of supplies, it was still good to not have to divert front-line combat strength for it.

As for why Gunter himself was headed toward Paris instead of the Swiss border, it was quite simple. Paris was a delicate operation, requiring great finesse to reduce damage to the city and civilians, whereas hammering their way to the border, like the Dragoon groups from the south, was a matter of shooting every German unit found until they surrendered, and continue the ploughing until the border of Switzerland was reached. That was hardly complicated, unlike taking Paris without wrecking the city or, for example,the Grand Theft Auto operation.

* * *

><p>-FLASHBACK BEGINS-<p>

Hannah had told Gunter before she left that if the _Tirpitz_ had indeed surrendered to Hackett she had been planning to make her into a "baby cousin" of the _Dawn_, since it just wasn't the same calibre as the _Yamato_-class ships and thus couldn't be a sister. Then she'd probably hand her over to the Canadian Navy proper, much as she'd handed over the captured/renovated _Admiral__ Graf __Spee_. It would have been too annoying fully rebuilding the _Graf __Spee_ to her standards and constructing a new Destroyer—a better warship—would be cheaper anyhow. The same was effectively true for rebuilding the _Tirpitz_ to the _Dawn_'s standards, not economical, and SI, unlike a country's military, couldn't afford to be inefficient in having too many ammunition types. 15-inch AND 18-inch naval guns? Nah…

Gunter had originally thought sending four Allied battleships for the German one was a bit overkill, but after the British showed their design problems, he concluded that it would have been just enough. The _California_ could near the end of the fight have killed the _Tirpitz_ on its own, but only after sustaining moderate damage herself. The _Richelieu_ had taken a pounding and the _Duke__of__York_ was effectively impotent thanks to being the only _King__George__V_ class battleship not then in dry-dock having its turret ring systems overhauled to a more reliable one. The _Nelson_'s faulty armour belt disposition, to save weight, had already killed it by the time the _Dawn_ arrived. THAT was unfortunate, but while the two SI commanding officers were busy sighing as they listened to the radio, Gunter watched some medical orderlies moving supplies around and had suddenly had an idea. "Hannah, why didn't we get some sleeping gas used for medical reasons to clean it out back when we took the _Dawn_?"

Hannah had turned slowly to look at him before facepalming and groaning "how could I have forgotten that possibility?"

Gunter von Esling wondered vaguely if he'd dislocated his jaw as it locked in place a bit before he could shut it again "You FORGOT something?"

Hannah rolled her eyes before snapping back "Hey, I'm only human!" Then she got poked. There was a sharp sound of flesh meeting flesh, then…Gunter's every instinct told him to cower and make himself as small as possible as his slightly shorter superior seemed to tower miles over him. "Did you just poke my chest?" He wondered why she hadn't hit him as hard as he knew she could hit… i.e. why his face only stung on one side instead of him being knocked over. Then he realized that she'd basically held his head in place with her other hand while slapping him.

"As observed, hardly human, you're forty-six, Hannah Shepard, you should SAG and be all… squishy or whatever!" Gunter gestured not at all vaguely at his Generalissimo's chest to accentuate his words. (A/N: By WWII standards, 46 was rather old…)

Hannah's anger deflated rather quickly as she rolled her eyes "Oh… well I guess that's an acceptable reason, besides, it didn't hurt much…" She winked and chuckled as she clapped a hand around Gunter's shoulder.

Gunter rubbed his cheek then, wincing "Well it hurt for me…" Fortunately, everyone of sufficient rank to hear found it incredibly funny when they found out about his new bruise, and he got another add-on to his description: Foolishly Brave. The day before D-Day, when Eisenhower had met with him again, he'd asked jokingly if Gunter would like a Medal of Honour for sheer guts. Of course, everyone got serious and "forgot" about the incident once work began.

-FLASHBACK ENDS-

* * *

><p><em>Paris, June 17-25, 1946<em>

On June 17 Gunter von Esling had first infiltrated the city via the most blatantly obvious option ever: captured German Opel 3-ton trucks pressed into service, with dozens of Battle Rifles stashed away in crates in the back (topped off by crates of food, claimed to be salvaged supplies from the front), plus lots of German-speaking men dressed as Wehrmacht men. Since the escapees from the Falaise pocket were so disorganized, Gunter had the perfect opportunity to add his own men into the mix of disorganized Wehrmacht, SS and Gestapo refugees flowing into Paris. All they had to do was act like they belonged… and stuff hundreds of rifles and boxes of ammunition to the local resistance cells they were in contact with, then leave the city on foot, heading east, and join SI units of APCs and Raider IIs parked in hidden spots waiting for rendezvous.

It was so hideously blatant that no one thought of it, typical of SI Spec Ops missions, unfortunately for the receiving end, no one had figured out their "walk in the front door" trick yet, since they mostly left no hint that they were ever there. In the one case where there was a hint of them having been there, i.e. the kidnapping of Six and O'Duffy, they'd left false signs of egress through a window, and had to shoot their way out after a while. It had been sheer dumb luck that none of the team died, that and the support they had from the Irish Resistance.

As for the difference between Black Ops and Spec Ops, the former were Denied Ops, no knowledge of anything having been done, or that it was more than an accident, or not acknowledging it for at least decades. Spec Ops were operations that they would confirm to have done if mass speculation and media spread about their involvement and confirmation was approved by High Command i.e. Hannah, Jane, or any Theatre Commander. Anything that wasn't classified at least during the course of the operation was classed as Standard Operations. Standard Operations characterised the SI style best most of the time: brief flurries of breakthrough and exploitations in rather random places (though always circling back to a strategically valuable position) followed by long stagnations. During these pauses their allies are allowed to do most of the work to keep the troops fresh and sharp enough to slash through on the next attack. Spec Ops and Black Ops didn't follow the style so often.

Truman called Gunter again once he knew it was unavoidable that the man would do whatever he liked. "Hello General."

"Hello Mr. President." Gunter stated blandly, he had no taste for politicians who tried to interfere with military affairs without any understanding of the military.

"I'd like to ask a favour of you."

Gunter rolled his eyes "Yes?"

"Could you exclude black soldiers from the column entering Paris? I asked the French troops following you around and they said they'd do whatever you did."

Gunter was strongly inclined to hang up right then and there, he had better things to do than listen to this dumbass "Why should I exclude some of my men?"

"It would look better on propaganda videos at home."

"Do you have too much time to spare Mr. President? If you do I'll ask the troops right now, and you'll be able to listen to their reply through the radio speaker."

"Go ahead… but don't take too long, I'm a busy man."

"I am too, Mr. President." Gunter flipped on the broadcast on the Supreme Command Channel "This is General Gunter von Esling, everybody listen up!" Radio chatter on the other channels quieted rather quickly. Gunter then covered the mouthpiece of his phone "President Truman would like to ask us to leave our black brothers outside while we march into Paris because , I don't personally agree, how about you guys? Answer me on this channel on my mark, everyone at once, repeat it once after saying it. Oh, and try to be polite" It took a while and a lot of lower-channel chatter before he turned up the big radio speakers to max volume, covered his own ears and barked "MARK!"

Gunter was VERY glad he'd gotten a fuse system installed for his radio, or it would have fried the whole device with the volume of the second repetition of "NO ONE LEFT BEHIND!" Instead the fuse just burnt out with a pop. He put the phone back to his mouth "Well, sir, it seems the men don't quite agree… sir?"

"Sorry, I'm shifting the phone to the other ear right now, that hurt…" Truman stated coolly over the phone. Meanwhile, Gunter was hearing, played at low volume, chatter over all the lower channels regarding "Who the fuck does he think we work for?" "Who the hell tells us to abandon the brothers who fought in the line with us?" and of course "Damned Americans, and you wonder why slaves came to Canada during the Civil War…"

* * *

><p>AN: The Americans really did make the French leave black soldiers outside Paris when they went in to liberate it. This time, they don't get much of a say as their own troops are moving east behind the main body of Gunter's army.

* * *

><p>It was on the eighteenth of June, 1946, that about 2000 tanks and even more APCs stormed into the city, supported by the revolting local French, who were skirmishing wildly throughout the city with the Germans, using Molotov Cocktails and satchel charges to fight German tanks. The former were unsuccessful and were repurposed for infantry-killing as the Germans had adopted SI's engine coverage system, but the later were still good. The local Wehrmacht commander attempted to falsify history by recording in his journal that he tried to save Paris. Needless to say, the French were not too happy about this. A French veteran stated "for as long as he could, he killed French people and, when he ceased to kill them, it was because he was not able to do so any longer." The man was sentenced to life in prison with parole after forty years. In other words, it was life in prison for him. It took two whole days to secure the city, notably including many hours taken up sniping Germans off the Eiffel Tower using APC firing ports (to reduce friendly casualties from return fire).<p>

On 20 June, 1946, Daladier and De Gaulle, President and Vice-President of the French GIE respectively, entered Paris to a thunderous welcome as Gunter organized a victory parade ending with the two politicians delivered to the French War Ministry. Both made speeches to the crowds, one after another. Daladier pressed home the point that women who had sexual relations with Germans were to be forgiven unless they were known to have sold information to the Gestapo. De Gaulle emphasized how any round-up movement after the war was to be non-violent unless the ones to be arrested opened fire first. Needless to say, it hardly dampened the spirit of the jubilant mobs.

However, SI's 60,000 front-line soldiers in the city soon had another headache. It seemed Daladier's words had not sunken in, since women were being arrested, their heads shaved, and then were exhibited and being beaten up by the crowds. Quite a few were badly injured before Daladier put his foot down and made the French police take action against the pro-purge crowds. In the meantime, SI offered amnesty and Canadian refugee status to women escaping persecution. To quote Gunter on the subject as he shook an arrested lynch mob member by the collar just before the man was bodily hurled into a jail cell by SI troops "love is blind, so what the fuck are you inhabitants of the 'romantic country' DOING?" It was for being one of the main members involved in beating three women nearly to death before the soldiers broke through and dragged them away, having to use dozer blades equipped with rubber sheaths to push the crowds out of the way fast enough.

What was fortunate was that Gunter was German-Canadian, so having him as "the Liberator" rather softened the nationalistic urges of the French, and forbade De Gaulle from specifically calling "Germans" the enemy. This meant that no one died in lynch mobbing, though there were a few executions without trial, these were mostly at least examined by SI troops. For example, the New French Army was forced to stand down in a tank-to-tank standoff over a Gestapo man who was respectful during his tour of duty and actually sheltered three Jews in his home. It was so astounding that the French didn't want to believe him. Gunter gave the platoon commander present praise for good work later and sent the Gestapo man with the standard prisoners after interviewing the Jews. It was extremely rare to find one alive these days, since the Germans had done far, FAR better in Continental Europe than in Ireland.

* * *

><p>AN: This next part does not represent my views regarding Israel, merely a coolly logical result of a longer war and a more thorough Holocaust. The talk about what SI does in Canada also does not reflect my opinion on Aboriginal culture in Canada… other than about the potlatch thing. Also, Hannah's not perfect, she's far from it, but she at least has a good idea how far she is.

* * *

><p><em>June 29-30, 1946<em>

Hannah sent him some new intel on the 30th, while Gunter was finishing the stranglehold on German forces in France. At another conference, this time in Washington, it had been decided that the concept of a State of Israel was to be scrapped, since they just couldn't scrape together enough Jewish people after the thorough Nazi extermination campaign to justify ejecting Arabs for it. Hannah suggested to the leaders that they create a Neutral Zone in Palestine, to be a protectorate of a major power which could safeguard the peace of the area without being religiously rude or biased. As for the choice of a fully secular, non-racist great power… there was only one.

"How many territorial holdings do you WANT, Miss Shepard?" Truman asked with a hint of disgust.

"Mr. President, we all know that a state established on a racist basis or a religious basis which clashes with its neighbours is a powder keg." The area was mostly Muslim, coexisting with Christians and Jews. Thankfully, Islam was a relatively very tolerant religion in the overwhelmingly vast majority of cases, but Hannah suspected that would change if they formed a Jewish-dominated state on the shared Holy Lands of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. "We want to keep the area peaceful, not set a time fuse for another war in the region. It would be best if we established a fully secular refugee state. No one gets blatantly offended, and extremists are drowned out and talked into reason by the masses. The problem is that we can't anger those masses, creating a State of Israel would anger the masses, and next thing we know they'll be sheltering and funding resistance fighter groups all over the place. Another thing, it wasn't just Jews the Nazis were killing, they were after all the intellectuals, Gypsies, homosexuals, and so on. More of the latter groups died than Jews… preferential treatment given to the Jews by us will irk them."

"She's right, Mr. Truman." Churchill stated simply "She was right when she warned me that the Germans might invade Britain and Ireland, and she was right when she told your predecessor to watch out for Pearl Harbour. Yes, she was a bit off on the timeframe of the German invasion, but she was right nonetheless. I think we should listen to her." Churchill was thinking that his country would have enough trouble completely rebuilding after the war as was, and that if Hannah was willing to take the issue off his hands then he'd gladly let her, after all, it didn't cut the Suez Canal or anything…

"I must also back Miss Shepard, Mr. Truman, she makes a great deal of sense." Daladier stated with a shrug. "She is a reliable ally, and a very popular one, handing control of the operation to her will appease groups both at home and in the Middle East if she does it the way she says she'll do it." Everyone else shared a significant look then, since they'd never known Hannah Shepard to go back on her word. King and Hannah said nothing, merely nodded along with the others as they fought on SI's side, allowing them to fight it out among themselves to the logical conclusion once the other major Allies were all aligned with her on the matter.

King was contemplating a memo he'd gotten from Truman regarding how he'd let the woman beside him go way too far in her power and how he should nationalize her company, confiscate its equipment, and put the troops into a Canadian Army. There were several problems with that proposal that resulted in King burning and shredding the memo after reading it. The first and foremost problem was that she'd already presented him with a proposal that could turn Canada into a superpower within twenty years, as long as there were revolutions happening, and the European nations began relinquishing colonies. She was bluntly honest with what she expected to get out of it: World peace, well, relative peace at least, which she could be warden over. From what King had seen of the papers she'd published on politics, and his shrewd politician's eyes, she had no fantasies about ruling the world. Instead she was focused on creating a balance of power between several major powers so that friendly competition would accelerate world scientific progress and other initiatives for elevating the standards of life.

She was hardly a normal woman from what he could see, it was truly rare for one to understand that ruling the world was an impossible and untenable position that was destined to collapse quickly. No, what WAS tenable was to make one's client states follow willingly and happily instead of by force. Certainly they couldn't please everyone, but he saw a new future for Canada in Shepard Industries, and he liked that future, one where they would lead an alliance of the smaller powers of the world, those destined to spring up once the European powers began to lose colonies. For fear of the other, more threatening Great Powers, the smaller powers would need to band together to not be bullied around, and they would need a powerful military force to extend a dome of protection. The force would need to be larger than any one of their countries could field, and any joint command would have petty rivalries, so they needed someone outside. SI and therefore Canada could be that outside force.

It was also a convenient shield for any major military operations, so that Canada wasn't involved per se. This meeting was to create the first of his country's client states, so King was obviously for the creation of the sort of state Hannah proposed. It would increase his country's prestige and power, and even if SI's dome of influence eventually grew large enough that Canada was no longer more than half the land area under its influence, it was hideously obvious that it would be the main industrial power. After all, the technologies of the future needed more advanced hardware to produce than would be available in the brand-new countries that SI/Canada would mainly be trying to absorb into its sphere of influence.

The third and deciding reason for the Canadian government not doing anything was that SI had become too powerful to deal with easily or feasibly. Given the choice of making his country essentially a Great Power or making it a US protectorate just to deal with a PMC, he obviously preferred the former by a vast margin.

* * *

><p>AN: No offence to Americans, just an observation of what America likes to do, push around smaller powers.

* * *

><p>Truman finally backed down and chose not to use the US veto on the UN Security Council, agreeing to Hannah taking the Palestine region as her territory and making it a formally secular zone for refugees of all races and religions from Europe. The State of Palestine, a formal client state of Shepard Industries, would be formed on August 1, 1947. It gave her enough time to scramble the two Logistics Brigades currently concluding training, plus Tenth Division, and send them as an expeditionary force to set up enough prefabricated housing complexes for the refugees to live in. They would have to use the strictly organized reinforced concrete slab buildings for quite some time, at least until things could be properly organized and society rendered stable in the region again. Schooling was organized by teachers trained hastily to keep religion out of their lessons, and was a highly irritating thing that Hannah had to organize, drawing on the pool of recruits Jane quickly assembled for her. The basic curriculum was established essentially ripping off the US public school curriculum, minus all real religious affiliations. Saying a certain monk of a certain religion discovered the gene idea (Mendel) did not count as being religious. Teaching Creationism instead of Evolution however was strictly forbidden (unless in the form of class debate or discussion and it was brought up).<p>

Public services had to depend otherwise on the military units she was sending until a civilian Parliament could be established. Her plan was for her client states to be constitutional monarchies, with her at the top of the ladder and having veto power. Of course, she would rarely exercise it (Jane would temper her on it), but if someone tried to pass a law allowing legal polygamy (open marriages didn't count here) AFTER it was outlawed in a region, well… Her SI Client State Constitution, which she'd hammered out long ago, stated very clearly that once polygamy was outlawed in a region it would never be reconstituted. It also had a blunt article denying public funding to any and all religious schools, in addition to forbidding reconstitution of any full-time religious schooling once it was outlawed for the first time. She had consulted several rabbis, imams and other religious people on it, and they'd all agreed that it wasn't too fast or harsh and mostly let the territory change at its own pace, hence it was quite agreeable.

She chose the system because many of the regions she would hold sway over would have been monarchies for at least quite some time, so an immediate shift to Canadian-style democracy (not American, too capitalistic for her liking) was untenable. The older generations would resist and incite rebellion in the younger generations. A gentle-handed semi-monarchy where citizens have a say in things could be gradually changed over a period of twenty or thirty years to a liberal democracy where the old ideas are gone with the old, stubborn generation. The proposal had been run by Churchill, King and Daladier already, and the Briton had asked why she wasn't a professor in sociology. Her reply was that "to make a peace where a system can be tried and peoples slowly converted, one must have the ability to maintain that peace within the testing zone".

As for why she so supremely disliked (hate is a strong word) religious affiliations, being a scholar of sorts gave her an understanding of the history of religion versus science. The Roman Catholic Church dragged the feet of European science for centuries, and Taoism, Confucism, and Buddhism had dragged the feet of Asian science if her research was correct for about 2000 years. As a result, she found organized religion to be best for comforting people who are huddling in the dark around fires in caves. It wasn't very useful for scientists (rather an understatement), hence she figured that an eventually secular education throughout her territories would let her keep the scientific and technological edge she needed to stay afloat and ahead of her competition. To compete with other great powers in the future, she needed an army of scientists, and full-time religious education severely hampered that. Canada was already inefficient enough with its Catholic school system…

Of course, she let them have lots of freedoms and rights such as not restricting languages… though most of the schooling was in English, they were still allowed to speak whatever language they liked. That was in marked contrast to, for example, aboriginal residential schools which had recently been abolished in Canada. She'd been behind the effort to have the things banned since they were so abusive (after sneaking around one she declared it a glorified concentration camp), but she steadfastly held to the idea that some elements of so-called culture had to change with the times. A culture unable to adapt had to be crushed like the Aztecs were crushed by the Spanish. For example, she backed the Canadian government enforcing a strict ban on the potlatch or whatever it was called, that festival where they destroyed possessions just for the hell of it. Sure, they might consider it spiritual, but in a world where resources were clearly limited such organized wastage was nearing lunacy from her point of view. Random occasional wastage was natural as no system was perfect, but systematic reduction of one's own assets was well beyond her comprehension. She tried her best to make herself believe that she should leave it be, but her economist side was so up in arms over it that she subtly supported the Canadian government position on the matter… unfortunately for the natives.

Canada was rapidly becoming a Great Power, the people were happy about this, it was incredibly popular with most countries, and it was doing well for itself in terms of industry, raw materials, services, etc. Hell, Canada was even popular with GERMANY thanks to the mail packets arranged through the International Red Cross between the POWs and their families… even though the Canadian troops of SI were beating the crap out of the Wehrmacht step by step. Actually, they weren't, not anymore, since the Wehrmacht units in France had managed to break through northern Italy and run for Austria… and made it. That was because Switzerland's neutrality meant it really got in the way of cutting the Germans off. There was also the fact that Gunter was taking a sort of break with his men so that he'd be able to strike again with extreme prejudice instead of just steamrollering his way through. It did save SI many casualties and any/all combat fatigue. Besides, as long as they weren't pushing forward, the Allies in the line nearest the SI contingent could rest easy as long as SI broadcast its armies' location, since the Germans were too smart to banzai charge the SI units unlike the Japanese (who were still being annihilated island by island in the Philippines by the Americans).

Things were going well, everything was going well… right up until Operation Market Garden.

* * *

><p><em>September 20, 1946<em>

The Spanish had formally joined the war on the First of July, and that had essentially resolved the Allied supply problem as Spain had several deep-water harbours now dedicated to the task and could use patched-up railways into and through France for the job. However, the next operation would break Gunter's clean-up campaigns in France against pockets of German hold-outs. Market Garden began on the morning of the 14th, and everything went fine for the first day. The Americans took the Nijmegen Highway Bridge so soon after the landings they had only to face a mere dozen German defenders. Since they were not equipped with radios with the sort of range SI radios offered nor the option of receive-transmit (different frequencies of course) signal propagation, the attack soon bogged down in the face of German armoured units. By Day 3 it was obvious that things were not going as planned and Allied Supreme Command called Gunter to ask for concentrated armoured support. Even with British factories producing their own new tanks (ceramic was still an SI-exclusive technology) for the past year the Allies didn't have enough armour to put everything in one place, the largest steel fist they had were the 6000-plus Raider II and Raider I tanks in Gunter's army that weren't attached to aviation brigades.

For all doubting readers, yes Allied Command did spend time in self-reflection on the absurdity of the situation, but they had too many commitments and units to furnish any one unit as lavishly as SI did with its troops. They also knew that SI's weakness was lack of numbers, and that they were best employed as shock troops since they didn't have the numbers for a drag-out battle of attrition, and it wasn't worth spending so much funding on training the allies' own cannon fodder infantry for too long. At least it wasn't worth it to train all the Allied troops the way SI troops were trained. Five months was about five times the typical infantry training time of the other Allies, and most of that time the Allies had was spent marching, saluting and so on. SI finished physical training, theoretical lessons and beefing recruits' health by the end of the first month with exercise and balanced food, though this meant several religious groups were prohibited for their dietary restrictions from serving on the front lines. The next four months were spent in hours of training in various weapons, vehicles, and technologies each day with war games and practice battles to boot. Needless to say, they were much more combat-effective than anyone else, but also more expensive to field.

It took until "Black Friday" (the 20th) for Gunter to gather up all his troops, two days after he'd gotten a call regarding problems popping up. They had been scattered all over France in division-sized units mopping things up in the tougher holdouts… and accepting surrenders from the ones that wouldn't agree unless they were surrendering to SI troops. The two days had been spent by Gunter organizing his units, loading on extra supplies, and of course in abject shock and horror at the parachuting tactics the RAF and Americans had used. Soldiers, especially paratroopers with their heavy loads, could not walk very fast, and if they were dumped more than 2km from the target Gunter believed it would be useless, unless done at night for a Spec Ops mission involving infiltration, but still, marching EIGHT kilometres in broad daylight and expecting to keep the element of surprise? "Maybe Hannah was right, Eisenhower is a political appointment and the British can buy rank, maybe that had something to do with it…" he wrote in his diary "Sure, Montgomery's good, but his subordinates are not necessarily as competent, and they put Patton elsewhere." The two men respected each other very much, to the point of joking over how a shorter war might have meant Patton getting his ass killed in a car accident or something else similarly retarded while both were drinking a bit too much. They then spent some time tipsily laughing their asses off, but that was beside the point.

* * *

><p>AN: I do believe that was how Patton died in our history, car crash injuries.

* * *

><p>While Gunter was surging toward the operational area of Market Garden, the battle of Aachen reached its seventeenth horrible day. The Germans had fortified EVERYTHING possible in a London-style battle of attrition, and new armoured vehicles and weapons being brought out. Panzer 7 tanks, the Lion, had begun to reach the front, mounting a new 105mm, 70-calibre cannon which could kill a Raider I even with appliqué armour at ranges up to 900 meters. Raider IIs with appliqué armour could endure until about 750 meters (tested using spare armour plates and a captured, then repaired, Lion tank) before being shredded. Once again, the Germans had one of the best anti-tank weapons: A better tank.<p>

Fortunately, the Lion's top speed was only 23 km/h, a mere third of the Raider II's, and its armour design did not include ceramic, though it was sloped and 120mm thick. Mohaupt's HEAT research had advanced enough so that the 90mm HEAT warhead of the 95mm gun could penetrate up to 225mm RHA reliably. He'd increased round diameter and efficiency via assorted changes to the shell design, and this meant that hitting at a decent range or angle of depression it could penetrate the 240mm effective horizontal thickness of the German tank's frontal armour.

As for armour-piercing sabots, they were not yet as powerful as the HEAT shells, nor as effective for multi-purpose work, hence were not developed too much other than for ship guns. It had been found in a skirmish in the Pacific that an SI Corvette's guns could hole Japanese light cruisers effectively at small-ship engagement ranges using sabot shells, much as Destroyers could puncture enemy heavy cruisers and even battleships at long and moderate ranges respectively.

The shortcomings of the Lion tank were what allowed the Allies to still overwhelm it near Aachen, mostly by aerial bombing but also by encirclement, since even the underpowered Pershing could outflank the Lion, especially in urban warfare, and fire into the back of the vehicle to disable or destroy it. Not everyone insisted on near-uniform protection on all sides the way Hannah did for everything up to the Raider II. The Bazooka could even kill the Lion from the rear, which was utterly astonishing considering it packed less power than the B model of the "Ram". The Germans had also put a new rocket launcher into the field, the Panzerfaust II, and it effectively matched the original A model of the Ram in penetrative power. Hence it was able to cut through most Allied tanks frontally, and could even pierce and destroy a Raider I if the angle was right.

The two factors combined however to make Market Garden a disaster, which meant of course Gunter had to go in and save the day… Some of the men and women grumbled a bit, but they did the work nonetheless. It was the SI way of doing things: If you want to complain on occasion, go ahead, get it out, then shut up and get the job done. It was the first time most of the SI troops had gone up against a truly better tank in terms of firepower, since the Raider I and II hadn't been much below the King Tiger, as that tank's gun wasn't quite as long. They found it almost a culture shock and lost quite a handful of vehicles before adjusting their tactics and pounding the tanks into submission with massed fire to smother them. The angry tide of steel and ceramic washed aside the German lines and spirited away all the surviving paratroopers in a single day in APCs, trucks and even some stuffed into the extra space inside the fairly roomy tanks. The paratroopers didn't comment on the seating arrangements. Cannon fire roared all over the Netherlands as Gunter's ten divisions clashed mercilessly with the Germans, and the Allies followed them. Lion tanks were defeated by superior numbers of Raider IIs, or outflanked by British/American vehicles. Most of the former were still Raider Is, but they still managed to inflict terrible damage on the Germans, or the few elements not mopped up by or surrendered to Gunter.

It took four whole days—rather telling of how badly the Lion tank and the Panzerfaust II slowed down SI units if they wanted to maintain an acceptable loss ratio—to reach Aachen after heading out to extract the paratroopers (and transporting them back). This may have had to do with forming a defensive perimeter (by dozing into existence ramparts and parking the tanks on the reverse slopes) to await the return of the main supply train units after the lift to friendlier areas for the paratroopers was organized. They only continued after their supply train fully caught up, shredding any German units they came across that chose not to surrender. By the time they reached Aachen, Gunter's messenger had come back with the message that "We will never surrender!"

In response, he'd snorted and sent back the message that "If you do not surrender within 24 hours we will level the city and you with it. Have you evacuated all civilians? We will give you 48 hours to do so if you have not done so yet." He also messaged the other allies to stop their advance for now.

The reply was "We've evacuated the civilians, go ahead, give us a break if you want… but your advance stops here, Gunter von Esling, you traitor…"

"HITLER is the true traitor to Deutschland, mein kamarad." Gunter replied before starting a 30-hour ceasefire, giving the Germans some extra time to think… and for his own truck convoys to bring up massive mountains of howitzer shells for his long-ranged 100mm tubes and his rocket artillery units. It also gave him time to get the newest and best maps of Aachen. He tried to convince the German commander repeatedly over the next hours, but all attempts failed.

After 30 hours of waiting and piling up ammunition in assorted dumps camouflaged from air attack, the howitzers fired first. Gunter's 1080 tubes were firing at their standard sustained-fire rate of 5 shells per minute per gun for ten hours, hurling 3240000 shells into Aachen, walking their fire slowly across the city. The rocket artillery pieces took about 5 minutes to reload and so launched only 120 volleys from the 50 self-propelled 40-tube rocket artillery pieces. Obviously the rocket artillery men were faster to tire, but they were practiced enough to use only 3 or 4 minutes to reload near the beginning and took a while to lose speed from fatigue (the howitzer gunners had no such problems as they took turns loading and the shells weren't as heavy). It was still 240000 rockets, targeting suspected bunkers and troop concentrations inside Aachen, and it wreaked absolute havoc on the city. Both types of bombardment were forbidden from targeting important historical buildings, but otherwise tore up the urban landscape like a big carpet being rolled up. Gunter had to declare DEFCON 2 (as a Theatre Commander he was allowed to do so) to be permitted to authorize Urban Carpet Shelling as he called it, as it was an analogue of Urban Carpet Bombing. That had been downgraded to DEFCON 2-authorizable and the name changed from Absolute Bombing, but it was essentially the same: kill everything that's not undeniably a civilian facility (e.g. schools, hospitals, etc.) in addition to preserving what the Theatre Commander tells you to keep. In this case, that included historical monuments.

Gunter took a break at the end of the ten hours to let his gunners and rocket artillery operators rest, and for more ammunition to be trucked up to the front from the nearest available train station. The new German fighter jets were matching well against the British ones, but outmatched SI warplanes in everything except manoeuvrability and reliability, hence supplies weren't as easy as before to bring up. Still, Hitler was an idiot as he wasn't building enough of the things, which meant that the SI air arm still did well and racked up an even kill record by swarming the German jets.

The Allies had so many different commitments for their air forces that their first attack on Aachen had only had 500 planes for support. In contrast, Gunter was having trouble finding airstrips for his 3200 total planes. Every road that wasn't totally occupied was used, several more were stamped out by tanks and APCs, and it still wasn't totally enough for everyone to have a comfortable amount of room to park their planes on the ground instead of on the trucks that usually moved the planes around. Before his planes were going to arm and head off, Gunter decided to try again for a surrender. He got no reply, and surmised this to be either a denial or a sign that the guy's radio was broken. So he ordered two planes to be loaded up with leaflets with the message in German that "If you wish to surrender, please place a large white flag or tarp on top of the city hall," That whole block had not been blasted simply to keep/make the building recognizable "thank you. We will accept a truce after seeing the tarp. You have 29 hours."

Of course, Gunter would again give them 30, but by the eleventh hour they'd already put a tarp up on the city hall in the dawning light. The Germans unconditionally surrendered the cratered layer of rubble, with occasional intact areas around historical monuments and landmarks… though all the statues of Hitler were torn down as the Allies took the "city". The sharp rubble had to be pulverized by repeatedly running it over with tanks, but the pebble roads were ready for Allied infantry to walk over safely once all of Gunter's remaining tanks went through the city a couple times. There were still about 6000 of them (tank counts had been reduced so that there were more spare crewmen available, tagging along in the aging but occasionally modernized APCs), having lost about 75 to combat and another 126 damaged by mines. The uncertainty was due to the mechanics not being totally sure yet whether to scrap some of the disabled ones and the low losses were due to a combination of great armour and swarming. Unfortunately, the Lion tank was abnormally accurate in its sighting, and quite a few Raider Is and even IIs had been lost due to that. They recovered wreckage of some sort of new gun-sight from the German hulks, but those would take time to analyze and counter. As for the mine problem, it seemed that mines sank enough in the mud that a shallow scoop of the blades wasn't quite enough to get rid of all of the damned things, and those tanks in the front line typically came out with one or both forward track pods disabled and more often than not at least one of the big road wheels' mounts broken.

In the meantime, Gunter believed his troops to need some time to reorganize and some more training in possible tactics to counter the new Lion tanks. So he ordered the advance to halt after penetrating 10 kilometres beyond Aachen, trusting that his large number of long-ranged but only moderate-calibre artillery guns would be able to reliably deal with most enemy attacks on his salient. Of course, ten divisions wasn't exactly a salient in terms of vulnerability (or lack thereof) but that was beside the point. He also needed time to analyze the new German tactics, time that would have to be bought in Allied lives as they weren't ordering him to do anything at the moment. It was only a few days later, the 5th of September, 1946, that Gunter turned his eyes to the Battle of Hurtgen Forest that had begun some days earlier.

It was a dense forest, denser than the Ardennes, and the Germans were ready, Gunter observed from battle reports. They had dug in, sowed great minefields, and blockaded the area, so that the only trails were enfiladed. According to the reports the effects of tree splinters from artillery shells on infantry were absolutely gruesome. Gunter noted that down as a tactic for use in the future against massed infantry advancing under tree cover, thus being difficult to detect from the air but rendering themselves vulnerable to this tactic Gunter had just learnt. Tree pieces apparently were far better projectiles than concrete, as that was too likely to be absorbed by another slab of concrete i.e. a wall, unlike tree bits which could go through the gaps in another tree's branches and still kill. Several weeks passed without further incident except the Allies pushing toward the Siegfried Line continuously. Of course, there was also the First, Second and Third divisions, which he'd detached for the task of assisting the British, advancing north from Antwerp to capture more of the Low Countries. It would be VERY beneficial to everyone's supply lines.

Worryingly though the casualty rates in the three most veteran divisions had climbed past 8% and looked likely to reach an alarming 10% as the troops took the River Scheldt. The Wehrmacht had recognized the importance of the area and were hell-bent on stopping the SI spearhead, even if it meant moving most of their estimated stock of Lion tanks into position to battle it out with the Raider IIs. Gunter detached Fourth Division to help, leaving himself—despite the latest supplies of new vehicles—with 6 divisions, roughly 3700 tanks, with only 2700 of those being Raider IIs. Field Marshal Walther Model was good, Gunter had to give him that… maybe he could recommend the man for a good position in the post-war German Army, assuming Gunter still had influence?

Operation Queen was going okay with Patton in charge, but the Germans were offering such stiff resistance that even the US armoured warfare specialist could do little to speed things up. His armour was distributed among such a long front and so many units that he could at most concentrate about 800 tanks in an area, with British support, 1500, so if he wanted a big steel fist he needed to phone Gunter. Patton didn't call, and Gunter was happy preparing for an outflanking attack against the Germans in the south. He planned to leave his salient stealthily and then crash into the Germans far south of his current salient. Unfortunately, since he was building up his main supply stashes in that southern area, Gunter didn't have more than 4 equivalents of ammunition for his vehicles or men at his current location, nor more than that many equivalents of fuel. His, and SI's policy was to be like the riders of Genghis Khan and take everything with them if they moved, if they didn't, that was another matter entirely. He was regularly skirmishing to keep German attention on his salient.

* * *

><p><em>December, 1946 to January, 1947<em>

That was VERY bad for Gunter when the Battle of the Bulge started on 16 December. The Wehrmacht had mobilized much of its reserve and though with inferior equipment to front-line units, these possessed crushing numerical superiority. Gunter's six divisions, 96,000 actual troops (the Aviation Brigades were some distance away), though heavily dug in and with decent stockpiles of supplies, in addition to consistent air support and resupply by air being available, faced no fewer than 35 German divisions, about 600,000 soldiers. These forces had been marshalled for this offensive against the bulge in the line around Aachen, and comprised half the forces mobilized for the entire offensive along the whole front. This group's main job was to crush Gunter's units and ideally capture the General.

The howling of the early morning snowstorm was pierced only by the whistling of artillery shells. The Germans were firing 1600 guns over the 30 kilometres of salient front line and continued it for 90 minutes even with vicious SI counter-battery fire tearing up many of their batteries after the recon planes clawed their way into the air. The aircraft couldn't stay up long, as the weather wasn't good. However, this problem was somewhat counteracted by Gunter moving his artillery around enough and having them under such camouflage and behind enough ramparts that only a few of his 618 (103 guns per division's ground units plus 5 per aviation brigade) howitzers were wrecked. None of his rocket artillery pieces were taken out, and they rained fire back on the parts of the German lines the artillery seemed to come from.

Then, through the snow, through the smoke, came the German tanks and infantry units from all around the salient. Raider I and Raider II tanks opened fire as soon as the Germans passed the 1500-meter mark, scoring kills among the lighter tanks using their gun-sights and the pre-placed range markings out in the fields cleared around the defensive perimeter. At the same time, the entire Allied line from the northernmost reaches to the Swiss border came under attack almost at once. Radio chatter filled the air as various units reported they were under attack, and Gunter was almost swamped with bad status reports from other commanders up and down the line to all Allied commanders that were listening.

From what he could surmise, the Germans were achieving localized breakthroughs all over the front, but being repelled in about 50% of the front. His own troops were faring acceptably, with his Motorized Infantry having disembarked and dug in, as their trucks weren't armoured beyond small-arms and shrapnel. Their A-WRL-80-15B "Ram 2" rocket launchers and battle rifles provided a large amount of accurate fire while the tanks focused on blasting the enemy tanks. The APCs targeted the lighter enemy vehicles such as German APCs, using their 40mm guns firing armour-piercing shells to butcher the enemy. However a hail of suppressive artillery and bombing soon wreaked a dose of havoc upon the defenders, wrecking several vehicles and giving away their positions by burning pyres in the snow. Counter-battery/AA fire and fighters swept the skies clear nearly immediately thereafter and strafed the enemy infantry columns as much as possible. Gunter moved his troops around slightly and waited tersely for the battle to resolve itself, only occasionally ordering major artillery strikes on specific areas of the German advances to break them up. He really couldn't do too much except call for help just like all the other commanders and redeploy his forces as appropriate.

By the end of the first day, thousands of German corpses littered the snow and dozens of vehicles were burning, but they had been beaten back at the cost of a bit over a hundred SI casualties… only twelve of those casualties were going to make it. The Germans had thrown their most elite SS units, as they were the most likely to fight to the death, at the SI salient, and Gunter was paying for it. Over the night the men laid out their stockpile of captured German landmines and laid traps in the snow. Most of these consisted of sharpened sticks buried in the snow, pointed up and at an angle toward the German line, but there were a few that were more sophisticated. Bad news came in non-stop over the night as Gunter tersely ordered that the position be held. Losing it would leave the Netherlands completely open to outflanking, and they couldn't afford that. Montgomery's units north and south of his own had pledged to hold no matter what, so they couldn't fall back and slip away in the night. Besides, no doubt German heavy artillery had the evacuation routes zeroed in.

The next day saw another attack in the darkness before the dawn, then another around noon, and another in the evening, all of which were repulsed with heavy German casualties, but Gunter knew his perimeter was slowly shrinking and he was steadily losing soldiers… The night brought more horrors as the Germans bombarded them with artillery, replied to by heavy air support from the ten Aviation Brigades Gunter could call on carpet-bombing the German lines with 40-all bombs. There were also stories circulating about some of the SS units.

Kampfgruppe Pieper was the most notorious, murdering many prisoners they took along their way west. Gunter told his men rather bluntly that he would see those responsible for issuing the orders shot and those who carried them out put to trial and prison for being "Dumbass son of a bitches". Then there was Kampfgruppe Knittel, which tortured and killed eleven black American soldiers northeast of St. Vith. Gunter told his men that those responsible for the torture would be "terminated, because torture is worse than killing". In the night of December 18-19 his own salient was cut off by a surprise attack to the British units holding his rear, so he had to reinforce the defences there and rearrange things, one division per sixty degrees of the roughly circular defence line.

Over the next month they relied on air-dropped supplies and their own stores to endure the siege and inflict horrific damage on the Germans, tying up their very best armoured and infantry units against the Allies' own best. US reinforcements were coming slow, because of Otto Skorzeny's infiltrators resulting in rumour-mongering and checkpoints. Fortunately, all attempts to infiltrate SI columns with SI uniforms failed… though some of the trickle of Allied survivors entering the encirclement may well be fakes. This was as the SI way was to quiz the guy on doctrine, which was thoroughly drilled into soldiers by many days of lessons, not ask who Mickey Mouse's girlfriend was like the Americans were doing…

Several splintered battalions of the 15th Motorized Brigade were surrounded despite Gunter's manoeuvrings, they were entrapped and reduced. Lion tanks and King Tigers, coupled with massed artillery, beat back a thrust by the 300-some Raider IIs of Tenth Assault Armour Brigade. This cost Gunter 53 irreplaceable tanks while the Germans, thanks to Gunter's use of combined arms being better (i.e. having enough air support to drown the Germans and a better rolling barrage), lost 150-plus tanks and many other vehicles, including assault guns and artillery pieces. The casualty ratio was far higher, as German infantry had been shot, burnt, sheared and/or trampled into the ground during the offensive. Gunter was very glad that SI's tanks included a good reverse gear, or he would have lost even more once the attack lost momentum. That loss of momentum was mostly because of one last message from within the smaller pocket before the next supply drop would have arrived "Out of vehicles, out of ammunition, will destroy all radios and sensitive technologies before surrender."

Still, in retribution for the piles of German corpses which, once frozen solid, were being used by the SI troops to build ramparts and walls, the SS units drove the prisoners forward toward the walls of dead Germans at bayonet-point. They stopped at one kilometre range, at the closest wooded approach's near edge, far enough that machine-gunners couldn't get them accurately and sniper fire was inaccurate due to the howling wind across the open field at this range. Then the SS troops pinned down their prisoners before one by one crucifying them after stripping them naked. No fewer than seven of the twenty-four Brigadiers with Gunter begged him to surge forward and annihilate the SS group before saving whoever they could out of the prisoners. Gunter however maintained an iron fist of control and ordered that units remain in place, not moving forward a single step. "Infantry, hold position, but shoot every German you can see out there with your Battle Rifles." That meant they would fix the standard-issue scope that came with the rifle, which was affixed to the gun's Standard Scope Rail only when needed. "Someone get the German prisoners and get them up in the front line with binoculars, they need to see this…" His left eye was said to have twitched a little as he said this.

One of the worst things about having young women in an army was that every time an SS man was shot dead (this was very difficult thanks to wind and turbulence) by one of the snipers another of the female prisoners was raped and then killed in front of the scopes of said snipers. The wind made it so that fully accurate sniper fire was rather difficult, and that did not help the sheer hatred filling the soldiers to the brim as they watched their brothers and sisters be desecrated and killed. However Gunter's broadcast was that "It's a trap, they're trying to lure us out! If you want to avenge those men and women do not move a centimetre" Joining SI meant learning metric "at this time… let me do some of this." He moved into his APC's turret "Where are the sighting mechanisms?"

"Here sir… you sure about this?"

"I've never been more sure about anything, 40mm of dead SS men… coming up." He took aim with a few pointers from the gunner at the heads of two SS men gang-raping an SI soldier "Scoped…" he depressed the firing stud for Single Fire "and two scumbags dropped, Infantry snipers, cease fire, APCs, snipe with armour-piercing munitions, you have better flight characteristics than the infantry rifles at this range, but be careful aiming, we don't want to kill our own people by the shock of the shells if possible, but I have a feeling they're all dead anyways".

He was right, as soon as the last SS man in the field was down from a 40mm round tearing his head off, German artillery tore the place up. Only dog tags would ever be recovered of those lost, all 1351 of the prisoners. Then again, all the SS got back of the 50000-plus corpses making up the walls of the encirclement which was termed "The Ossuary" (Place of Bones) were, well, bones and dog tags.

The next offensive by the Germans, in January, saw the SI troops, supplied by air, beating the shit out of them around the Ossuary. At the same time, the First through Fourth Divisions, with Hannah rushing back to Europe to take command of the detachment, had regrouped and launched a major counteroffensive east of Antwerp. At the same time, Patton's Third Army was storming north toward the German contravallation, swarming and destroying even the few Lion tanks they faced. The Panzer 7 was still scarce and rather slow to boot, so it had mainly been deployed to units which were laying siege to the Ossuary. Hence Patton was able to tear his way through, much of this success due to his troops' Battle Rifles being semiautomatic instead of bolt-action like the German Mausers.

Only the elite SS units had StG44s, a full-auto rifle that replaced their Mausers for all except the snipers, and these were rendered moot by their limited effective range and the high degree of armour and fire support SI infantry possessed (APCs were used as mobile bunkers rather frequently). Hannah sent a message and three packaged StG44s to Jane as soon as her troops captured some of the guns and ammunition. They needed to be analyzed and a superior weapon produced if she was going to keep up the kill to death ratio she wanted… Fortunately the Ossuary was holding firm with more than enough supplies to keep them fighting, with winter lubricant oils and winter uniforms parachuted to the troops in larger-than-required quantities so that they could endure.

Finally, on 28th January, the Siege of the Ossuary was relieved as several units of the US 9th Army penetrated the German lines at high cost. They were met with the 75913 survivors out of the 96000 soldiers initially trapped in the pocket. Said survivors emerged from behind ramparts build from parts of at least 150,000 German corpses. Many estimates to the number of bodies incorporated at least in part as shrapnel-absorbing ramparts and external walls (heaps of frozen meat soaked up a LOT of shrapnel) in the Ossuary range upward of 200,000. In total an estimated 300,000 German soldiers died in the fields around the Ossuary, fields that were littered with the burnt-out husks of literally thousands of vehicles. The bodies were buried in a mass grave ploughed out by tanks and labelled with a concrete slab, using a vehicle repair drill to carve out the words while the bodies, those that could be recovered, and dog tags of the fallen SI troops were sent back to their countries of origin for burial. Of the 20087 that were gone, only 18357 dog tags and fewer bodies were recovered, the rest were marked down as Missing In Action. It was the bloodiest battle SI had ever been involved in, and the worst that Gunter would be in before the Third World War. It was also the absolute worst kill-to-loss ratio SI had suffered so far.

The Germans had shot their bolt as their northern line collapsed at the same time as their southern one and their center one, which stagnated. SI was also spent for now and needed time to regroup, reorganize, and of course cool down a bit from the sheer rage induced by the killings of prisoners. However, Gunter agreed to one last offensive after Hannah handed her four divisions over to him once the siege was lifted. He'd done his task—tying up the best German units—admirably and bought enough time for the Allies to beat back the massed enemy offensive that most called the Battle of the Bulge. The offensive was launched east from the Ossuary, and about 135,000 men and women (Hannah had taken about 4,000 casualties in the bitter fighting in the Netherlands) smashed through the German lines with all guns blazing. Flamethrowers burnt men and all non-metal equipment to ashes, the wounded drowning in pools formed by melted snow from the fires, machine-guns and cannons blasted German positions apart in blind fury. No surrenders were accepted from the same SS units that had murdered so many prisoners, and though SI took casualties they were relatively light.

After all, with the grinding combined-arms advance which left only a field of scorched earth, any German infantry that survived couldn't do much damage. Rocket-equipped soldiers were among the first targets to be sniped, hence they weren't left alive, and StG44s couldn't penetrate the limited armour of the trucks effectively. Grenades tended to also just bounce off. After bleeding the Germans again for what they did, inflicting another 100,000 casualties in exchange for 400 of their own killed—not being stuck in one area worked wonders against German artillery—they pulled back to lick their wounds and formally reorganize.

SI no longer had the strength for ten divisions, and there was no chance that reinforcements could keep up. They could only reorganize to fill up their strength acceptably, and so units were shifted around to form nine reasonably whole divisions while reinforcements came up to fill the gaps. This meant of course that Tenth Aviation Brigade was job-less. The two Aviation Divisions, which had separate Brigade numbering systems, were essentially hired out on garrison duty in Southern Italy and northern France, so Tenth Aviation was put to similar duty, except it was now officially the on-call close air support for any division that needed additional services.

The front line stagnated until late February 1947 when the US Army led the push on the Rur River (not to be confused with the Ruhr). It took until late March 1947 for them to approach the dams on the river, only to have said dams blown up in their faces. The resulting flooding along the River Meuse meant that Eisenhower phoned Gunter again. "Von Esling, my friend, I must regret to inform you that you will have to keep the portion of our united forces east of the Rur going until late April at the very least." The American stated grimly.

Gunter, whose opinion of Eisenhower was not great since he found out that America had a racially segregated army ("I thought they already had a damned Civil War over the matter? Didn't the anti-slavery people WIN that one?") replied with a sigh and "Alright, but you owe me for this one…"

* * *

><p>AN: This chapter was faster than I expected. Also, there's a poll on my profile…

You know, I think I'll later make my Pokémon series into, eventually, a sort of parody of the _Legend __of __the __White __Snake_, which will be fun to see, except this time around, we'll end the fight with the forging of the Ultimate War Machine instead of putting Liara under a tower. Another point is that it is possible for the crew to be happy with someone other than their intended, or at least, be happy for a while, but that can only happen if they haven't met their intended yet. After meeting… it's done, deal's up. Another thing is that some pairings are impossible, for example, neither Shepard will ever go on a date with any iteration of Miranda even once for reasons put later in this series (ME era). Also, for the record Jack will not be named Jack in this universe, you can guess her name, but not her back-story… you will never guess my remix of it.

That aside, you'll just have to wait and see regarding airborne mobile units, and yes, I will capitalize extensively on helicopter technology. Also, I can see the Galactic Defence Initiative and SI repeatedly coming close to all-out war in the far future over GDI's pet project, Cerberus (I do have an explanation for the family's incredible longevity, it's related to Kane, and it's genetically plausible). The whole mess probably had to do with how most of Nod's darker elements joined GDI society while the more ethically correct programs and scientists joined SI's side. GDI preached forgiving and forgetting, whereas SI went absolutist and rejected or executed confirmed war criminals en masse, hence the two superpowers' holdings of the world were influenced differently. Paragon and Renegade sides are as yin and yang. Humanity will probably balance 70-30 overall. SI gets 75-25, GDI 75-25 and Cerberus 0-100. Advancing human interests isn't worth losing our sentience for, hence 15 of SI's 25 Renegade points come from ruthless eradication of "very bad people doing very bad things".

I can see a whole fic just based on the Policy Conflicts, including the Bombing of Vancouver, the Battle of Jump Zero, the Biotic Insurrection, the Conatix Genocide, the Gas Attack of Pyongyang, the Cerberus War, the Dynasty Project (Miranda and those who came before her), etc. Of course, after Cerberus split from GDI, things changed… a lot. And when events Kane ensured would happen by ensuring mankind's existence come to pass, we shall see…

REVIEW!


	22. The Last Days

A/N: The sniper range earlier was deemed as "impossible" hence the SS troops had that audacity (They aren't stupid, 1000 meters with heavy cross-wind in between? Not possible for the Battle rifles their opponent uses). They didn't realize 40mm guns could be used for sniping until it was far too late i.e. whole volleys began raining down on them.

How SI works: Field larger numbers of medium-high capability units than the other side can field high-end units and make them of adequate quality that swarming them with lower-end units is unaffordable. For the record, with the poll on my profile, I support C&C, then the Avatar War, then ME.

* * *

><p>Chapter 22: The Last Days<p>

_Early March, 1947_

Tanya and her team had infiltrated the Tokuyama area already, and were encroaching upon the naval base under secret orders from Hannah. The 40-soldier force would need to forage for food and water, and rely on the ammunition they were sent ashore with, which was quite a large amount. They would incorporate themselves slowly into the operations of the base while awaiting the _Yamato_ sailing, upon which they would board and steal her just like they had her sister ship years ago.

Having practiced many times on the _Dawn_ (_Musashi_) before and during its refit, they had pretty good ideas as to what to expect. Now all they had to do was wait for the Americans to move. After all, there was no way the pride of the Japanese Navy would not try to save Japan, or be allowed to fall into enemy hands, so it had to sail when Okinawa was attacked sometime in April. Preparations for the op had included telling the Americans to not sink the _Yamato_ before it could beach itself on Okinawa or was around the island for more than a day i.e. only if the op failed. In fact, the whole convoy was to be left alone unless the op failed.

At midnight, 6 April, the ships were fuelled, with the infiltration squad hiding wherever they could. Under beds, in latrines, in the showers, wherever they could hide and look legitimate, they did. They got away with it simply because they looked like they belonged, and this lasted through the whole day, at 16:00 on April 6, the ship left port escorted by a light cruiser and eight destroyers. It was sighted by the two SI subs then on station as part of the supply effort for the infiltrators, and they shadowed it, ready to take care of its escorts when necessary.

In the night of April 6-7 as the ships sailed toward Okinawa, most of the crew was ordered to get rest for the fighting of the coming day. Almost all of them would be dead before dawn. American fighters and bombers were annihilating Japanese air units all over Kyushu systematically throughout the night as Tanya's group killed the crew of the battleship one by one. The Japanese group, being under marginal radio silence, suspected nothing out of the ordinary. At least, they suspected nothing until the US carrier pilots noted no fire coming from the battleship and received, loud and clear, the message that "What is done is done, and cannot be undone". This was at 12:30 PM.

The Japanese radio men were trying to isolate the source of the signal when the torpedo-bombers used the _Yamato_ as a bit of a shield in their dives levelling out into runs on the destroyers and light cruiser. The two SI subs also participated by feeding the Japanese torpedo after torpedo. It only took 2 minutes for the light cruiser _Yahagi_ to ask what the _Yamato_ was doing. Its response was one 18-inch shell, then another, leaving it ablaze and breaking up in the water while the surviving destroyers went into a sort of stunned stupor broken only by the guns of the Yamato firing again and again at the three that were left after the initial torpedo and bomb work. Soon all were sunk with only superficial damage to the _Yamato_, including one watertight compartment near the bow punctured by a torpedo, one from an SI sub that had missed a destroyer.

Other than the message that "We have been betrayed!" the Japanese got no word of what happened to their largest ship, and even that message was only received by a plane then on patrol some miles to the north. It had been relayed by the one destroyer that lagged behind sue to engine trouble, which then turned back, but did not make it to Japan before being overwhelmed by planes. The two subs had left it alone as to not warn the Japanese that they were being followed. Only a handful of survivors were picked up, even when about twenty SI corvettes arrived on the scene, having steamed at about 40 knots for an hour to reach the area for survivor pick-up and delivery of the sleeping gas canisters that would be used to fumigate the Yamato.

Several hours later, it seemed as though nothing had ever happened, the few Japanese planes arriving on-site noting nothing but a bunch of oil slicks. The _Yamato_ was believed by the Japanese to have been sunk, and that belief would not be corrected until the next year…

* * *

><p><em>April-June, 1947<em>

The Japanese defences consisted of 77000 regular army units, 9000 Imperial Japanese Navy troops, 39000 drafted locals, 1500 high school senior boys and 600 senior girls (the last group was a nursing unit). This meant 2.5 divisions of real troops, expecting 6 to 10 divisions of American troops. By superior quantity and quality of weaponry, each American division had seven or eight times the firepower of a Japanese division. This wasn't even counting the crushingly superior air and naval power the US could bring to bear. Of course, the other Allies contributed sea and air power too, in the form of the Allied Pacific Fleet (mostly former Scilly Armada units), a good 50 warships, of which 17 were carriers of assorted types and sizes.

The first units ashore had been on the Kerama Islands 24km west of Okinawa on 26 March, and the 155mm Long Tom howitzers, incorporating many design elements from the SI 100mm howitzers such as long barrels for range and precision, were set up on the easternmost of these islands to help shell the Japanese. This stage of the op also eliminated the threat from suicide boats and provided a protected fleet anchorage. The shelling and a feint off south-eastern Okinawa meant the Japanese didn't budge from their positions.

Hence 10th Army swept across the south-center zone of the island with ease starting on the First of April, then moved northward through mountainous and wooded terrain. It was not until18 April that all of northern Okinawa was cleared. In the meantime, Le Shima, an island just west of Okinawa's northern part, was taken by 77th Infantry. They encountered the conventional threats, kamikaze attacks and even Japanese women armed with spears—these were shot—in addition to massed civilian suicides. The civilians had been issued grenades by the Japanese Army units and encouraged to kill themselves…

Needless to say, that made for GREAT anti-Japanese propaganda. So did the Japanese driving Okinawa natives at gunpoint out to get water and supplies for them.

Unfortunately, the Japanese were either too arrogant or bushido forbade the passing on of combat experience. The officers only knew how to win from the winner's side, not how losses happened from the loser's side. Hence they actually tried massed, sustained offensives across the entire front on successive nights from 12 to 14 April. The Japanese 32nd Army's staff finally concluded that the Americans were vulnerable to night infiltration tactics but their superior firepower made any Japanese troop concentrations very risky. Hence they reverted to the defensive in the face of sheer American numbers and firepower. Another whole division had landed, so each division had only 2.4 km of front-line to hold, or about 7 to 8 men per meter of front.

American fire support led the next offensive on 19 April, but the Japanese hid on reverse slopes and then emerged to rain mortar fire and grenades down on the Americans moving uphill. The Americans tried to use tanks for a breakthrough, but it fell victim to close-range satchel charges and Molotov cocktails since they were not in the sort of overwhelming, near-solid-wall numbers that SI would use in any armoured offensive. According to the US Joint Chiefs, it was the difference between a scalpel and a large hammer. However, empirical evidence proved that on occasion, the hammer was superior to the scalpel. The attack ground to a halt after several more days of fighting.

Skirmishing continued until 4 May, when the 32nd Army launched another counter-strike. It had an attempt at an amphibious outflanking of the Americans, and the Japanese artillery moved into the open to support this. They fired 13000 rounds, but were obliterated by American counter-battery fire. The attack failed epically and wasted dwindling Japanese resources. Another American attack on 11 May was followed by ten days of fierce fighting during which the Japanese lost their two main hills, but which concluded with monsoon rains turning the area into a big swamp. A very annoyed Nimitz ("Two months for a puny island… really?") phoned Admiral Williams in Vancouver to ask for some "special help".

After the formalities, Nimitz got straight to the point "Do you have a Logistics Brigade that can come help us out?" The B model of the 5-ton truck could freely switch to a wide-tread half-track configuration, and even the A-model had an engine breather assembly that let it pass through water as long as the hood was not submerged. The closest thing the Americans had was the Buffalo amphibious APC, but that was rather slow on land. Besides, it would be nice to get some Raider II tanks (Logistics Brigades had been first-priority for re-arming) on hand. The American tanks weren't doing so well with the bad weather and the poor terrain, which was causing frequent break-downs. The next tank model in research, the M48, was planned to be a better tank than the Raider II, or at least be much cheaper, similarly reliable, and able to be fielded in huge numbers. Also, the dozer blades would be very useful to bring to the field that was part garbage dump and part graveyard, since all American vehicles currently able to use such an add-on with any real effectiveness were too lightly armoured to survive the light Japanese anti-tank guns.

"Well, the short answer is yes. Where, when, why and what?" The two men had a sort of friendly rapport and they both knew what Williams was asking.

"Okinawa, as soon as possible. I'd like them to clear a way through the swamp, help our supply and medical situation and help take care of the Japanese hold-outs" The trucks had a reputation for being used as field surgery centers "And we'd really like heavy armoured support to be available with both guns and flames… As for the price" that was what the "what" had been referring to, i.e. what the Americans were offering "We can negotiate face to face, but rest assured that it will be generous and we will use your usual terms."

That meant they would be on-call but requests could be turned down if truly needed, as determined by the commander of the hired-out task force. To quote one of the men, who actually was a mercenary before he enlisted, during a TV interview of SI troops on leave "We get better gear, better supplies, better support, better pay, better pensions, and better operational freedom than ANYONE else, and you wonder why I signed up?"

Once the Logistics Brigade arrived, well, they literally ploughed their way through the morass and burnt down the Japanese shelters on their heads, in addition to pounding them with 100mm howitzer, 60mm mortar and 95mm cannon fire until they stopped trying to shoot back. The ones that surrendered were utterly astonished by the organized food and water lines their captors set up. This was despite the fact that the SI elements had distributed leaflets telling civilians to keep their heads down and not return fire when SI units came by, which the Japanese tried to take advantage of. They failed epically only due to the satchel charge resistance of SI tanks and the fact that SI trucks were armoured on all sides against small-arms, with a wedged roof to bounce/roll off grenades. The houses that fired back were literally fired into in return by the flamethrowers mounted on the Raider IIs, cooking everything inside and more often than not bringing the structure down.

There were several infractions however, with a series of tense standoffs between US and SI troops before the generals in charge declared all rapists fair game for arrest. Of course, those caught in the act were declared as resisting arrest and dealt with right away, but most of the rest only got dishonourable discharges. There was no point in denying the rapes by US troops now that it was shouted all over North American and European newspapers. An attempt to strike back at the Extermination Orders backfired embarrassingly when the Leader's Petition was dragged out into the open, and soon all mentions of the EOs disappeared from the media. There was also the fact that the concentration camps and the massed war crimes by the SS, SSA and Gestapo had made them so unpopular that killing was considered too good for them.

172,000 civilians had died by the end of the battle, many handed grenades or killed outright by Japanese Army troops. They had been used as human shields, been looted of what little if any food they had, killed for hiding food, been used as objects of sexual relief, and in the last desperate days slaughtered for meat by the last Japanese holdouts. These last holdouts, the few that were subdued alive, often by shooting out the joints in their limbs, became the subjects of perhaps the most vicious war crimes that Allied troops ever participated in. The war crimes were utterly overlooked by the commanders once they inspected the shelters the holdouts had been captured in and the remains of people cut up like cattle. To quote Generals Stilwell and Geiger, US Army and Marines respectively, "Prisoners? What prisoners?"

The SI side of things didn't go much better, except, as per the operation report "We caught a bunch of man-eating animals, used a sandblaster" It was one of the pieces of hardware only Logistics Brigades usually had on-hand, to help repair things "loaded with coarse salt from the kitchens on them, then discarded the meat once it was found to be unpalatable even after barbequing." In other words, the ones that didn't quite die during the blasting were doused with gasoline and lit on fire to burn to death. Then the bodies were buried haphazardly. Still, the photos of the hideouts were used in propaganda posters SI stuck up all over the world, distributed through Hannah's network of contacts and consulates (these were to facilitate business between the local government and SI). No one mentioned the treatment of the cannibals.

* * *

><p>AN: In the battles in northern Burma and southwest China, Japanese soldiers ate Chinese corpses and the Chinese did the same with Japanese corpses, due to lack of supplies. What little supplies they got from their respective sides was ammunition used for "hunting for food". Cannibalism is not above us, my friends, neither are war crimes. In fact, there is a reason why the Final Foraging Doctrine (only enacted when desperate) is classified. It's considered too disturbing for the general public to handle.

* * *

><p><em>Germany, May-September, 1947<em>

Gunter had hammered the Germans badly over the winter, running on supplies brought in on aircraft over the flooded Rur valley. This included airlifting dozens of disassembled Raider IIs, which even as the standard crates was too heavy for any one plane that he could land in his area to airlift, and putting them together on-site and repairing tanks which would have otherwise been salvaged for parts and scrap metal. He managed to box in the Germans in the Colmar pocket on the Rhine, and left most of the offensive work to the French. Unfortunately the motorboats, what few could be used, were a bit too wobbly for safe transport of tank parts, and most of the supplies still had to come by air, though the troops used both air and boat transport.

The French had foolishly chosen to cave to American demands to make their military whiter, and thus their inexperienced "whitened" units were incapable of containing the Colmar pocket. It ruptured north, overrunning several whole regiments of the new white French troops before Gunter pounded the offensive flat from both sides and put the experienced colonial troops, who'd fought the Germans everywhere from the Thames to North Africa, back into the front line. He would not cave to political pressure again, he'd done it in the first place only as he noted Hannah really annoyed some of the stupider politicians and he didn't want to make a big political mistake. Besides, the Frenchmen needed to be field-trained one way or another… it seemed it was too soon for Gunter to put them in the front lines as the bulk of the forces though.

In less glorified terms, Gunter ordered the French units attached to his command to stop listening to the French War Ministry and listen to his overriding orders instead regarding deployment. Certainly, it would annoy the French War Ministry, but Daladier and De Gaulle would understand once he stuck the combat records into their faces. Being a General had its benefits, such as direct access to the heads of states. In the meantime the Pocket was being reduced by a coordinated push of Raider IIs, shovelling the top 50-60cm of the meter-thick snow cover off with the dozer blades while crushing the rest down. Most of the mines were removed with the top layer, and the few that remained were dampened very much by the packed snow absorbing their blasts. Even the few tracks that broke were no real hindrance as those tanks just stopped for repairs while others rumbled by, firing cannons and machine-guns at any suspected targets. The tank groups leapfrogged by each other, replenishing ammunition whenever they were in the rear of the long battle line.

Using liberal level-bombing, Gunter managed to reduce the German positions west of the Rhine into surrendering by May Third, 1947, just as more Allied forces managed to get over the Rur (the flood waters finally died down). Most of his main forces had already crossed the Rhine and were penetrating toward the Maas River with a wild sledgehammer strategy, while the other Allies under his command were taking care of the pockets. His armoured columns were simply thundering through firing indiscriminately at anything that shot back or looked like a German tank, relying on speed and armour to protect them from accurate enemy counter-fire. Settlements were encircled and all military vehicles detected destroyed before the columns swarmed on. Upon reaching the Maas River most of the force was to turn back around and help allied units pacify the newly occupied areas. German counterattacks coming from the southeast were met with a blindsiding flank attack by Omar Bradley's 12th Army Group and Gunter whacking them over the head as they wheeled to face the American troops pouring across the Rhine like a human and steel wave.

It took until June the Second before the German lines finally collapsed once and for all. Montgomery's 21st Army Group had fully crossed the Rhine and supplanted Gunter's forces in forming the Ruhr Pocket, which was completed a week later. This contained the remains of a broken Wehrmacht, a few SS training units, militia and Hitler Youth units, with boys as young as 12. Gunter drew back to rest his troops after several months of anchoring the entire Allied front. This would prove to be a massive boon for him politically, as the 325000 German soldiers and many civilians surrendering in the pocket were herded into open fields without shelter and up to a third died from exposure and diseases such as dysentery. This was in far contrast to what happened to soldiers and civilians captured by Gunter's army, and helped, among other things, turn the post-war vote into a landslide.

By contrast, when later in July Gunter achieved another victory of almost similar proportions, with 220,000 German troops and double that number of civilians to deal with, he simply disarmed all of them and sent everyone not captured in uniform home. Those in uniform were quickly shipped to POW camps in France run by SI Logistics Brigades, using the thousands of extra trucks he had available to carry them all back in a mere two runs, the ones not belonging to SS units. These were the same units that had put down revolts in cities in the Ruhr Encirclement, these guys were put on trial right there and about 70% actually went to the POW camps, the rest being shot on site. It seemed the SS was a lot less evil to their own people than they were when they were marauding around other countries… though the war criminals were still culled. Here, shooting down revolts did not count as a war crime as it was the job of militaries everywhere.

On August 11th, the 12th US Army Group, supported by several other Army Groups bringing up its rear, managed to cut through to the old Polish border. There they were met with most of the remaining German eastern border guard units, rushing back through Poland despite the heavily bombed railway network. Fierce fighting raged while the First and Second Allied Army Groups cut across northern Germany to Danzig before storming south, overrunning German towns and units as the steel vice formed around Berlin. Gunter had been supervising the distribution of food to masses of starving Dutch in the Netherlands, but now the immediate crisis was averted he left only the Aviation Brigades' trucks to do the work (the planes were deployed at forward airfields, so trucking them around was no longer wholly necessary).

On the 15th a new and disturbing report came of German scientists in Poland disappearing, but no one thought anything of it. The attack on the Mouse Tank design facility was thought to be partisans. History would pay for that mistake, as the KGB obtained the scientists who would later create the Mammoth Tank, the beginning of a long line of four-track-pod, two-gun-turret tanks… The Soviets also obtained the scientists needed to create their own nuclear program, a program which would later be employed with wild abandon by the psychopath known as Joseph Stalin to the English-speaking world.

It was the 29th of August when Gunter's rocket artillery and light howitzers began raining shells into downtown Berlin ahead of any other Allied force. By the time the other allies' artillery units were trundling by the deployed guns, firing at 20 kilometres range, they had already been at it for ten hours, and in those ten hours fired just under 3500000 shells at the sustained firing rate of one shell per ten seconds. Certainly the 100mm shells were less powerful than the 155mm guns of the other Allies but their long barrels allowed them greater range and precision. This was in marked contrast to the rocket artillery pieces, the only reason they were so close to Berlin, which were capable of massive destruction but could not be very accurate or precise about it. In the ten hours, the rocket artillery pieces fired a bit over 100 volleys (the gunners had to eat/rest, and it wasn't like a howitzer where two men could work it while the others rested/ate). As there were only five pieces per division, with nine divisions, this came out to about 180,000-200,000 rockets lobbed into central Berlin around the Reichstag. The other allies didn't even bother with bombardment, instead relegating their artillery to close support duty while their columns rolled into the suburbs of Berlin…

On that same day Mussolini was killed by Italian partisans and his body, along with other Fascists, hung out for public display. Two days later Gunter ordered the cessation of stockpiling of ammunition and to cease supplying his forces with more fresh artillery ammo, instead changing the supply to reinforced concrete slabs used to construct prefabricated buildings, and large amounts of food and blankets. It was a calculated risk, but it paid off in that when eight days later all Germany surrendered, under Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, Hitler having committed suicide that afternoon. The civilian government capitulated one day after the armed forces did.

When Hannah met Donitz for the first time at the surrender ceremonies, her first act was to ask the cooks to prepare lots of donuts for the attendees to eat. Needless to say, though everyone else was laughing their asses off, Donitz didn't get what was so funny about Churchill tearing chunks out of his donut viciously and chewing hard, until someone told him. Needless to say, he did not enjoy the joke.

Occupation of the entire territory the Third Reich had once held was swift and efficient, with a massive US-spearheaded effort to rebuild beginning to fire up by two weeks after the surrender. In the meantime, on the other side of the world, the Allies were driving the Japanese out of French Indochina as the Japanese had build a rail network in southern China to ferry oil and materials to the coast of the Sea of Japan, bypassing the Allied blockade.

The official referendum as to the installed commander of the German Self-Defence Force (still called the Wehrmacht) happened on October Thirty-first of 1947, and despite several saboteur attempts being shot it was still a vast landslide victory for Gunter von Esling. Perhaps the way that his trucks were used for everything from debris removal to school buses was the reason for the overwhelming majority of votes being for him. Everyone had thought it a foregone conclusion and only a formality anyways.

That was, everyone except Truman, as would be later discovered, the POTUS had sent people to sabotage the results so that Eisenhower would win a position he had no interest in really winning. Fortunately, thanks to veritable fences of soldiers from Logistics Brigades and the fact that their most important training was in counter-sabotage/counterintelligence, the results had not been tipped by much in the few cases that managed to do anything. The installation of the new German Supreme Commander was relatively smooth, as Gunter commanded immense respect from friends and former foes alike, however, on the other side of the world, things were considerably less smooth. The negotiations alone had made that clear.

* * *

><p><em>Potsdam Conference, Last Day: September 11, 1947<em>

"Mr. President, you get to do the honours this time." Hannah stated politely.

It had taken a week to hash out a version of the Potsdam Declaration that was acceptable to all, including Truman, Hannah and King forming a united front to pressure Churchill into agreeing that Hirohito must be abolished and tried as a war criminal along with his family if Japan agreed to the Potsdam Declaration. It was this document that Truman began to read in the worldwide radio broadcast.

"These are the terms that the Allied Nations of the world present to the Empire of Japan. We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay. We demand the elimination for all time of the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest. We demand the occupation of points in Japanese territory to be designated by the Allies, and that Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine. These shall not include the Ryukyu Islands, the Kuril Islands, Formosa (Taiwan), the Volcano Islands, etc."

In other words, only the small rocks immediately along the coast of the Japanese Home Islands would still be Japan's. "The Japanese military forces shall be completely disarmed and stern but fair justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners. Emperor Hirohito is to be deposed and, with the relevant members of his royal family, be tried for war crimes." Prince Asaka, an uncle of the Emperor, for example, had been part of the Nanking Massacre and did nothing to stop it, while the general who commanded the troops had confirmed diary entries talking about how he could not shoot any more of his men lest they mutiny.

That general had been let off with only five years jail time in Canada once SI intervened in the trials and asked the jury to consider what the general could have done that would have been better. To quote the defence lawyer, "What can a man do to a swarm of rabid dogs when shooting too many would only make them eat him and be even more out of control? He managed to enforce complete order in his command within eight weeks, no one else even bothered trying!" The jury had managed to sway far enough to let the man get a soft sentence and the judge had said "If you're so intent on saving him, you get to take care of him for his incarceration!"

As for Truman's reading of the Declaration, it continued "We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation, the Japanese Government shall remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people. Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established. Japan shall be permitted to maintain such industries as will sustain her economy and permit the exaction of just reparations in kind, Japanese participation in world trade relations shall be permitted. The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government. We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction." He clicked the microphone off.

Hannah was frowning "What do you mean 'prompt and utter destruction'?"

"Make sure the meeting is private first." It took ten minutes to ensure this. "We are producing atomic bombs for deployment against Japan, maybe that will prompt them to think again before forcing our hand with Operation Downfall."

"Atomic bombs?" Hannah frowned "Anything to do with the recent scientific papers on nuclear fission?"

"That's how they work."

"When are you expecting your first bomb to be ready?"

"I believe it should be ready for the first testing to be around June of next year, enough time for us to enforce Operation: Starvation and slowly choke Japan to death in the meantime. A second bomb won't be ready until about July of next year, along with a third." Truman told her the honest estimated time.

Hannah broke out into a cold sweat at that, if the US were so close… the only way to prevent the cat from coming out of the bag was to destroy the target beforehand, and she only had one plan that could do that, but with Gunter's command still not fully stable… she would need to clandestinely ask Churchill and Daladier for help. After the Potsdam Conference formally concluded, she did just that, asking them to lend Gunter greater numbers of their troops to make up for her withdrawing First through Eighth Divisions from Germany for "about six months I would imagine. Tenth, as soon as it is reconstituted, will be stationed in Germany, but I don't think it'll be enough."

"Why pull out so many?" Daladier stated concisely.

"Truman wants to wake the sleeping nuclear giant… I fear that if that precedent is set, all human civilization may well be at risk. We cannot afford letting him use such a weapon before we know enough about its effects. That's why I'm going to conduct my own version of Downfall before he can use those nukes."

"It would be very costly by our estimates… do you have a plan?" Churchill stated slowly.

"Yes."

"Then that's all we need to know, good luck, Generalissimo Shepard, we will give you what forces you need to help Gunter." Daladier stated simply, glancing at his friend.

Churchill nodded "We owe you and the man enough, it's time we started repaying the favours."

* * *

><p>Furious exercises and planning characterized the next several weeks after the troops were given two weeks leave to do what they wished. The geography of Japan and the Allied jump-offs made a few things hideously obvious. The first was that the best landing zones, the Kanto Plain south of Tokyo and southern Kyushu, were going to be extremely fortified by the Japanese. The second was that any assault meant the Japanese kamikazes would only have to fly short distances over water and could swarm the Allied warships and landing craft. The question that remained was whether the Allies would want her help, since her transport ships, after their most recent modification regimen (making them the C models of their respective serial codes) each sported just short of two dozen mounts for 40mm dual AA turrets and had enough radar to coordinate accurate fire from those guns. So, instead of the valuable, slow, lumbering, vulnerable stereotype for transports, these, though the safe draft was too deep to land infantry, were moderate-price, faster than they looked, highly manoeuvrable, and well capable of self-defence against kamikazes or suicide boats.<p>

By December 1947 the Japanese had 100 divisional equivalents or about 2.2 million troops in the Home Islands but only equipment for 60 and ammunition for 50. They also organized the "Patriotic Citizens Fighting Corps" which included all healthy men aged 15 to 60 and women aged 17 to 40. It seemed they'd got their dirty little hands on a copy of Hannah's Civilian Armaments Doctrine—unsurprising considering how widely it was issued during the Battle For Britain—and exaggerated it a little. The total was 28 million people, and weapons, training and uniforms were generally lacking. Some men were armed with nothing better than muzzle-loading muskets, longbows or bamboo spears, but they were to make do with what they had… whatever they had. Some mobilized high school girls were issued awls, essentially a big needle with a handle used to scratch markings on wood, and told "Even killing one American soldier will do… you must aim for the abdomen."

To combat the Japanese tendency to fight from caves and tunnels, Hannah acquired several thousand cylinders of sleeping gas for fumigation purposes. There were a few problems still, such as her lack of adequate carrier counts, though two more Medium Carriers and four more Light Carriers had been completed through the course of the war, they had been in the Atlantic for quite some time before being transferred. Even putting in the escort carriers, which altogether more than doubled the SI Pacific Fleet, she didn't have enough support planes available to both fend off all inbound kamikazes and support the troops. However, the kamikazes would need time to get to her planned operational area, and the Japanese pilots at this point were likely unskilled and couldn't land well, so they would have a one-way trip. Still, she planned on obtaining Churchill's British Pacific Fleet for assistance in this daring venture… along with nearly depleting the SI Atlantic Fleet.

The Americans had foolishly forgone striking the enemy where he was weak in favour of air support from Okinawa, she would not make that mistake. However, she would make a sort of mistake in that she would "Sprint a hundred miles to fight" by a certain definition of the Sun Tzu quote. Then again, according to American intel, "The growth of Japanese forces in Kyushu is such that it threatens to grow to the point where we attack on a ratio of one to one, which is not the recipe for victory."

She didn't believe that, since each American division packed by the most recent estimates an average of eight times the firepower of a Japanese division. Each of her divisions by a friendly estimate from Eisenhower packed upward of four, maybe even five or six, times the firepower of an American division. This meant that one of her divisions had firepower equal or superior to about forty Japanese divisions, and in terms of protection the ratio was even more staggering. However, she was focused on achieving a numerical ratio of attackers to defenders of AT LEAST 1 to 3 (preferably 1 to 2 or 1 to 1) to ensure absolute victory in the initial landings. Intel estimates pegged the Japanese troop count at about two million with an estimated 30 million fanatically aggressive civilians, stacked up against her 160,000 soldiers. She would need to rely on employed strategy and qualitative superiority on this one, as she could not expect quantitative superiority except in armour and weapons anywhere on the Home Islands.

The worst thing by far about Operation: Tyrannic, so named as she saw Hirohito and his entire government as a bunch of power-mad tyrants who were as certain of their own superiority as they were certain that the sun would rise, was the speed with which it had to be done. Her armour had to range the width and breadth of Hokkaido within the first two days, perfectly feasible with Dozer Blades and the Raider II tanks all her units were now fitted with, and then seven of the eight divisions needed to be replaced by Allied (in this case Commonwealth) units as soon as the latter got ashore.

The fleets needed to go through the sea passage south of Hakodate and land north of Sendai and south of Akita. Each group would split off one division to surge north along the main valleys and level anything that tried to fight back, conquering Morioka, Aomori, and all lesser settlements in the area. Two of the Sendai divisions would hold the mountain pass south of Fukushima and the coastal road, in addition to pickets placed in between in the mountains. The last of the four divisions to be landed at Sendai needed to cut west across the mountainous terrain and link up with the one Akita division heading south (the third Akita division would head east to link up with the others at Morioka). Then these two divisions would drive on to Niigata and help establish a long defence line running from just south of Niigata to the mountain pass north from the Kanto Plain to Fukushima and Sendai. Commonwealth troops would pour into the line and hold it while she started Stage Three of Operation: Tyrannic.

It was the longest and most complicated plan she had developed to date, but it was chopped up into manageable blocks and hence Hannah believed it would work just fine. She could not, would not, on good conscience allow Truman the use of nuclear weapons, it was too dangerous a cat to let out of the bag, and would likely destroy Japan even worse than her invasion would…

History would only ever be able to speculate as to how horribly wrong (or perhaps not) she would be in that assessment.

* * *

><p><em>January 4, 1948<em>

January 4, 1948 saw the gathering of two large fleets just off the eastern coast of Japan, sailing closer by the hour. Finally, at 0100, Hannah gave the final authorization codes "Cold is the Void."

The British warships, already at top speed, soon found themselves abreast with their SI friends' ships which were catching up and passing them. Two hours later they were off the two invasion beaches for Stage One of _Tyrannic_, just west of Kushiro and south of Sapporo respectively. Both invasions began at 0330 with the thunderous volleys of well over 500 artillery guns of all calibres raining down a hammering hail of shells on all defensible areas of the coast while the freighters and corvettes charged the shore. The second wave freighters had used their open decks to provide firing platforms for the howitzers and rocket artillery pieces. Their wide, squat hulls meant very little sway even in the worst seas, and thus they were good firing platforms even while the howitzers pounded out ten shells a minute and the rocket artillery crews scrambled to reload at a rate of one volley for four minutes.

The telegram and phone wires between Hokkaido and Honshu had been cut as soon as the authorization was given by depth charges modified with timers and shoved overboard from attack submarines. The radio station at Hakodate became the target of no fewer than 20 bombs of the 400kg armour-piercing variety, plus a smattering of 200-plus 40-all bombs, and so communications were cut temporarily… or so they'd thought, one wire survived, and it was through this that the Imperial General Staff learnt of the attack only two hours after it began.

The columns of Raider IIs emerging from the sea in a looming armoured wall met essentially no resistance, and any that they did encounter was immediately dealt with by a volley of machine gun, 40mm cannon, flamethrower, and on occasion a 95mm APHE round. Even before the first Commonwealth troops were ashore (Churchill had been altogether too happy that he was getting such powerful support and needed only to keep peace instead of having his troops fighting too actively) the Raider IIs had already stormed into the suburbs of Sapporo. The local populace didn't even have time to obtain weapons from the Army… but still they fought the invaders, making do with what they had.

It was the beginning of the end of the First Empire of the Rising Sun, though at the time it was just called the Empire of the Rising Sun.

* * *

><p>Even before the first Commonwealth units were ashore Raider II tanks had already awoken most of Sapporo's inhabitants as they shredded Japanese Army fortifications in their way. The blasts echoed through the valley and alerted most of the inhabitants before Hannah would have liked. Several villages surrendered in the path of the thundering herd of tanks, but many more attacked them. Molotov Cocktails shattered on the engine covers of Raider IIs and APCs, flung from buildings on either side of the roads through the villages, and did nothing like what they could have done to some lighter US tanks (i.e. Stuarts). The armoured columns slowed down and odd-numbered squads' tanks fired left while even-numbered squads' tanks fired right, spewing flamethrower fire into any buildings from which attacks came to clear them out by roasting. The screaming, burning people that spilled from the doors were put out of their misery by the powerful treads of tanks grinding over them.<p>

Normally the SI troops would have extinguished the flames upon seeing they were civilians and tried to save as many as they could, but they were kept under fire until they had burnt or shot everyone who tried to fight. One corpsman who tried to save a civilian by leaving his APC was killed by a bullet through the head, so the others stopped trying until a helmet raised on a rifle through an open cupola ceased attracting fire. By that point there weren't any surviving Japanese combatants left to save… though the surviving non-combatants were given as much aid as the troops could give.

In the city of Kushiro fighting was raging from street to street. The SI refusal to participate in house-to-house combat, broadcast loud and clear to all of Japan with radio broadcasts and pamphlets dropped the previous week, was the reason for it being street to street. Their prodigious supply capability plus extra storage space in all their vehicles being used to good effect meant that any house that fired at them received some combination of 95mm cannon shells, 40mm cannon shells, 12.5mm machine gun rounds, flamethrowers and 7.5mm rifle rounds. Considering most Japanese buildings were made of wood and/or bamboo, fire was very effective at suppressing large fortified rows of houses. Suppression here went all the way down to the ground i.e. the houses were burnt and blasted down. Anything that didn't shoot back was left alone, but thanks to the Japanese Patriotic Citizens' Fighting Corps there weren't many buildings left by the end of the fight and similarly few people. After the first SI soldier who tried to help a wounded Japanese woman received a knife to the gut the policy was to stay inside their vehicles at all times, unless they were bailing out. Anyone charging them with a weapon was shot dead with profuse expenditure of machine-gun rounds.

In the meantime, the fleet was fighting for its survival as its big blue blanket of fighters intercepted the massed kamikazes coming from the south, downing thousands of them in a dogfight that careened over northern Honshu. However, over a thousand still made it through to the fleet and met its CAP fighters, several hundred being downed by the CAP. Still, some made it through the CAP to the flak screen the ships were throwing up as they dodged wildly. The few that actually made it threw themselves down at the carriers and their escorts. The British, being further east and mainly supporting the Kushiro landing zones, only got a bit over a hundred kamikazes and only a handful hit anything other than the sea.

The _Quebec_ trembled as she received six kamikazes hits within five minutes, while no other Medium Carrier received more than two (and only the _British __Columbia_ actually took two hits). The armoured flight deck and hangar decks prevented the carrier from being destroyed, but it was badly damaged and unable to receive aircraft. Hannah clenched her fists at the report of the blazing carrier, knowing it was a political disaster. The idiotic Quebec premier had demanded the ship be manned only by people who at least could speak French, with the result that the new crew's skill level was not up to par, hence the AA grid failures and bad dodging. They would no doubt insist that it was damaged by being put more at risk than the other carriers, so maybe she should just conduct a series of strategic assassinations in Quebec to shut the backward and idiotic aspects of that society up.

The other carriers were rapidly brought back to operational status, their flight decks patched with RHA plates and working again even before the raid was over, but the _Quebec_ was at best an ammo depot now, even though the fires had been put out effectively. The Light Carriers had taken some damage while the Escort Carriers received little attention, as the kamikazes were more attracted to the Destroyers, which had powerful AA grids. Only two of those planes made it through the hail of 40mm HE slugs to hit the Destroyers, and they didn't do as much damage as the Japanese would have liked (and liked to believe).

As the naval and air battle was wrapping up several Logistics Brigades came ashore south of Sapporo and began pacification operations, taking out holdout cells and calming the populace as best as they were able. Then came the First Aviation Division which used captured Japanese airfields, freshly ploughed-out runways, and any adequately long flat surface to fly close air support. However by the time they were fully set up and had enough airstrips plus security to work at full capacity, Hokkaido had entirely been overrun. Allied units following the SI troops only met minimal defiance as they occupied territory SI had just pounded into the dirt. They were there to mainly assist the Logistics Brigades numerically as they did their best to help the Japanese survivors.

The entire overrunning of Hokkaido took one and a half days. The pacification would take about two weeks before it crushed all resistance. By the end of the two weeks, only 40% of the population of Hokkaido was still alive… it would be the best survival ratio in any of the Japanese islands, as the Imperial Japanese Army took the six days it had between the news and the next invasions to arm the civilians with anything they could. The next landings, at Sendai and Akita, were met almost immediately with the fanatical civilian resistance they'd been expecting. Seeing the mobs surging toward them either unarmed or armed with bamboo spears, longbows, or in the best cases muskets, the tank drivers simply dug their dozer blades into the ground a little bit so that the crowd would be ploughed aside, relatively unharmed…

That lasted until a series of explosions signified the newest Japanese suicide tactic. People, mostly the teenagers, would hide anti-tank mines strapped to their bodies under their clothes and then dive into the gap between the forward and rear track pods of Raider IIs. This would usually only disable a rear track pod, as with dozer blades down it was impossible to dive under the front tracks with the relatively new skirt armour installed. Soon the tanks were forced to gun down anyone running too close (i.e. within about 30 meters) and toward them, apparently armed or not, because the vehicles couldn't move very fast with only their forward track pods working. The four-pod-drive transmission had originally been disliked as it made the Raider series tanks come to the field slower (longer research time), but right now they were a lifesaver as the vehicles dragged themselves along, with the rear pods' road wheels in neutral and the top wheels locked to keep the broken track on. This was the standard setting for a broken pod when the switch was thrown by the driver, so that it could simply be patched up later on instead of replaced entirely, since the track repair kits the tanks packed only had a few sections of track, not a whole track, and it wasn't too easy to fix up the road wheels themselves.

The areas were only lightly defended, and it was no trouble to grind those defences under the tracks of hundreds of Raider Tanks deployed on every front. The coastal artillery, the few that were applicable (as Japan had very few, surprisingly) didn't do a lick of good as they were thoroughly bombed out by the Aviation Divisions and Brigades flying from Hokkaido. Sure, AA fire took down some planes, but not an unaffordable amount, and the poor equipment the Japanese had been reduced to was almost universally proving ineffective against Raider IIs fitted with appliqué armour. This was with the exception of the 320mm spigot mortars and artillery pieces above about 100mm calibre (if they could hit, which was nowhere close to guaranteed). However, both were uncommon and counter-battery fire from SI or Commonwealth artillery soon silenced them even before the Raider IIs could thunder down upon the artillery batteries. The spigot mortars were disposed of by retreating and firing 95mm shells at longer ranges than the spigot mortars could manage, or by shoving lots of boulders over the tops of the slopes the mortars were typically behind. Japan's hilly terrain meant that a lot of defenders were buried alive or sheared in half by dozer blades…

Hannah hadn't chosen Akita only for its beaches, for that she could have gone for Niigata directly. No, she chose it because it had the last operational oil refinery, the Nippon Oil Company refinery, in all of the Japanese Home Islands, which she surrounded and demanded surrender from. When the guards refused to surrender under the white flag of truce, she did the only thing she really could considering her paltry numbers of soldiers: She levelled the facility with bombing from the air and artillery bombardment. Of the three million tons of supplies that she was bringing over the Pacific with her all the way from Vancouver only a few tens of thousands of tons had been offloaded thus far and it would likely be enough to sustain her operations for the duration of the campaign.

As for Sendai, other than being to block the path of Japanese armies advancing north from Tokyo (by virtue of the sheer speed of her armoured advances) both through the main mountain passage and along the coast, it also cut off one of Japan's largest ironworks, which was north of Sendai. The ironworks had been bombarded by Allied ships before, as had many other targets, hence the Japanese were almost used to it when they were bombarded again. What they weren't used to was the first wave of freighters and corvettes charging the beaches to disgorge tanks and such into the shallowest water they could handle. As it was begun at low tide some of the ships actually ran themselves aground gently, knowing the high tide would float them again. The ironworks were another part of Japan's industry slashed, already crippled by the loss of the Japan Steel Company facilities and Wanishi Ironworks in Hokkaido.

Seeing the deplorable state the Japanese were in, especially the areas which surrendered without a fight, Hannah ordered that "Except in cases of absolute necessity Foraging Doctrine will not be enacted regarding foodstuffs, enough have died needlessly already without having to starve to death."

On January 19th, 1948, the Niigata Line was drawn and Raider IIs dug themselves in as temporary pillboxes until the power generators, pillboxes and turrets could be unloaded from the ships to be set up. Jane had conceived of a new idea that would help shipping and deployment of the goods even more. Instead of assembly mostly at home and installation on site, they could do it all on site in a protected area that could also serve as a command center. The reinforced concrete and steel slabs and quick-assembly cranes, plus the gantries that had been brought in were put together on-site just south of Niigata to produce what Jane called a "Construction Yard".

"You sure this will work, sister?" Hannah asked sceptically, she had the eastern portion of the line and Jane had the west for now. Their parents could hold down the fort at home until testing of this new system was done…

"Watch and see…"

"Sure, but this had better not take too… whoa!" Hannah's eyebrows shot up as within a minute the crew, working furiously, had put together a Pillbox while another crew was preparing the foundation for it. Installation took only a few moments and in that time another Pillbox had been assembled at the Construction Yard.

"Works well, doesn't it?" Jane asked with a smirk. "And we can even disassemble the structures afterward, recycling some of our funds."

"Yeah, thanks, sis, the recycling thing is quite interesting…"

"Shouldn't you make another ultimatum directed at Japan?"

Hannah frowned "I am not very inclined to do so but… it couldn't hurt."

The broadcast was as follows "We, the Allied Nations of the world, are now prepared to obliterate rapidly and completely every productive enterprise you Japanese have. We shall destroy your docks, your factories, and your communications. Let there be no mistake, we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war. It was to spare you, the Japanese people, from utter destruction that the ultimatum of September 11 was issued at Potsdam. Your leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect to either be crushed under the grinding treads of Shepard Industries' armoured vehicles or to be vaporized by the United States of America with a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth…"

In other words, she tried to warn the Japanese that either she was going to crush them or Truman would nuke them. Did they listen? Tragically, no.

* * *

><p>AN: I've just browsed some WOW fics and have scribbled down some new and brutal ideas for the first part of that little time loop, but that's beside the point, other than explaining why Trolls are going to be absurdly rare. **I ****am ****also ****considering ****making ****some ****Commander ****T****'****Soni ****posters ****for ****DeviantArt,** although they will not be the best quality as I'd have to draw them myself. **Please ****comment ****on ****whether ****or ****not ****I ****should ****do ****so, ****and ****use ****a ****review ****to ****tell ****me, ****not ****PM.**

Personally, I want to put this timeline eventually through Avatar AND Mass Effect, since I hate how Avatar went, it made no sense whatsoever… and I'll enjoy the Turian reaction to Mammoth Tanks (I won't amp up the Council Races this time… AT ALL).

REVIEW!


	23. End of the Beginning

A/N: For once, I am ending a fic on an oddly-numbered chapter. In fact this is my first fic ending on a prime-numbered chapter…

* * *

><p>Chapter 23: End of the Beginning<p>

_Nagano Underground Palace Complex, January 20, 1948_

Minister of War Anami believed the Japanese Army's estimates as to the scale of the attack. These were gross underestimates, since the Japanese Army dismissed the intel reports it was getting from civilians as exaggerations. The Army believed there was no way that a PMC could field upward of a couple hundred tanks at once (despite earlier intel reports to the contrary), and the literal two thousand or so the civilians were reporting were dismissed as "Hallucinations of minds unused to the rigors of battle". Unfortunately for the Japanese, the civilians had in fact been UNDER-estimating the numbers of Raider IIs stretching across the waist of Honshu. So, they started preparing to impose martial law to prevent anyone from trying to make peace.

The Supreme Council met at 10:30 AM that day, and Suzuki, coming back from a meeting with the Emperor, said "I am sorry, my dear friends, but the exalted Emperor says it is impossible to continue the war… and I concur."

Togo Shigenori cleared his throat in the awkward silence "We could accept the Potsdam Declaration, but only if they make an amendment maintaining the position of the exalted Emperor…"

Naval Minister Yonai sighed "Whatever it is we need to make a diplomatic proposal NOW! We cannot afford to wait for better circumstances!"

By the time the meeting ended, the Big Six had split 3-3, with General Anami, General Umezu and Admiral Toyoda insisting on three further terms modifying Potsdam. They wanted the Japanese to handle their own disarmament, that Japan deal with Japanese war criminals, and that there be no occupation of Japan.

The full cabinet met at 14:30, also on January 20, and spent most of the day debating surrender. Neither Togo or Anami could attract a majority in the perfectly even split. At 17:30 the meeting adjourned with no majority. A second meeting from 18:00 to 22:00 also ended with no majority. An impromptu Imperial Conference was called and the Privy Council's President also spoke. Hiranuma said quietly "We can no longer defend ourselves, not against the vastly overwhelming armoured threat we face now. The population is restless, food grows scarcer by the day and our people are slowly beginning to starve… We have no choice but to surrender and hope that the spirits of our ancestors forgive us."

(Later historians argued that these words were what sparked the madness during World War Five, namely the creation of the King Oni War Mech and Giga Fortress designs)

At around 2:00 AM, January 21, 1948, Suzuki finally asked the Emperor to choose. Hirohito was said to have stated "I have given serious thought to the situation prevailing at home and abroad and have concluded that continuing the war can only mean destruction for the nation and prolongation of bloodshed and cruelty in the world. I cannot bear to see my innocent people suffer any longer… I was told by those advocating a continuation of hostilities that by December new divisions would be in place in fortified positions ready for the invader when he sought to land. It is now January and the enemy is just tens of kilometres away from this very room."

Although they were in the Nagano Underground Complex it was still dangerously close to the front lines. "There are those who say the key to national survival lies in a decisive battle in the homeland. The experiences of the past, however, show that there has always been a discrepancy between plans and performance. I do not believe that the discrepancy in the case of Kujukuri can be rectified. Since this is also the shape of things, how can we repel the invaders?" He then made some specific references to the campaign Gunter von Esling, Hannah's best protégé, had waged upon Germany "It goes without saying that it is unbearable for me to see the brave and loyal fighting men of Japan disarmed. It is equally unbearable that others who have rendered me devoted service should now be punished as instigators of the war. Nevertheless, the time has come to bear the unbearable… I swallow my tears and give my sanction to the proposal to accept the Allied proclamation on the basis outlined by the Foreign Minister."

Hirohito then departed the meeting, and Suzuki pushed the Cabinet to accept the Emperor's will, which it did. Early in the morning, the Foreign Ministry sent telegrams to the Allies via the Swiss embassy announcing that Japan would accept most of the Potsdam Declaration but "no peace conditions that could or would prejudice the prerogatives of the Emperor would be accepted."

Hirohito was informing the Royal Family that morning, and Prince Asaka, the one most responsible for not stopping the atrocities at Nanking, asked "Will the war be continued if the national polity would be compromised by peace?"

Hirohito nodded simply "Of course, Uncle."

* * *

><p><em>White House, Washington DC, January 21, 1948<em>

Truman snorted as he read the demands that the Japanese were in no position to be making. The annihilationist sentiments at home were strong and he'd realized long ago that the US public would support him even if he ordered the extermination of all Japanese everywhere. With Hannah in the scene he no longer needed to really invade Japan, in fact, he should just let her do the work and help out, saving him money, casualties, and responsibility for anything that happened DURING the offensive in Japan, while still putting the territory in his sphere of influence. He asked his secretary to deliver his telegram to Hannah.

It read simply "Hold firm to your terms, my friend, we must not let Hirohito stand except on trial! May God be with you." Truman was not interested in losing public support by letting Hirohito live, not after all the propaganda demonizing the man…

* * *

><p><em>January 26, 1948<em>

Hannah smirked as she received the messages coming in over the past few days regarding the Japanese announcement and the world's public response. Each country had made its own response, and all the major Allies voted in the negative to the Japanese demands, typically, their messages to her included something about "Who the fuck do they think they are to make demands of us at this time?"

She sent a telegram to the Japanese first, in the form of "We are saddened to learn that you would not accept our generous surrender terms. Did you know that many of the Allies were pushing for total annihilation of your civilization? I will not annihilate the Japanese race, but rest assured that if you do not surrender now, at least half of said race will die in the coming battles. You are in no position whatsoever to make demands, it is time to admit defeat…"

Then she ordered the dropping of the pamphlets she had printed just for this purpose, they had been delivered by a supply convoy just hours ago. It said in part "The Japanese people are facing an extremely important winter. Your leaders were shown certain articles for surrender by the Allied Nations to put an end to this war. This demand was rejected by your leaders, specifically the section regarding the abolishing of your Emperor and putting him, along with relevant members of his family, on trial for their part in the horrendous war crimes perpetuated by Japan's armed forces against the peoples of the world. Their failure to comply may well doom the Japanese people as the might of the Allies is overwhelming. The United States, for example, has developed an atom bomb, which had not been done by any nation before. It plans to employ this frightening bomb. One atom bomb has the destructive power of 2000 or more B-29s." She had worded it to be somewhat inflammatory, as it would either pound in the hopelessness of the Japanese situation inducing surrender, stir up a civil revolt inducing surrender, or make the Japanese Army fight to the death. Any of those outcomes would result in the neutralization of the Japanese military and a satisfactory conclusion to this tiresome war. However, she really hoped it would not be the last outcome and that they would not force her hand.

It turned out to be the last and worst outcome as Japanese civilians were pressed into front-line service in the form of concentrated attacks in the mountains of the Niigata Line starting on February 5th, 1948. Pillboxes, Gun Turrets and AA turrets alike were turned on them and cut them down in countless numbers with machine-guns, though they ceased fire once the civilians began to rout. That was just before the regular Japanese Army units began driving the civilians forward again and the commanders on the defence line realized what the Japanese were doing. While the invaders were stretched thin—three divisions were still engaged in pacifying northern Honshu in a systematic sweep of the island for holdouts—the Japanese were going to try to force their way through by, if no other means presented itself, exhausting the readily available ammunition supply of the SI units.

That was when the rocket artillery bombardment went into effect, a fusillade of the ballistic projectiles coming down out of the sky mere minutes after the barrage was called. Only a few of the targets—the regular Army units—had the chance to even take note of the attack before it raked over their positions with the large HEAT warhead design that was also designed to fragment. They were torn up badly where the volleys hit, but that didn't stop the 200,000-plus Army troops from driving ten times their number of fanatical civilians toward the Niigata Line as bullet sponges. It was then that the hatred of the Allies toward the Japanese military rose to its apogee as the hordes lapped closer and closer to the lines in the areas of attack…

In the end, Hannah had to authorize the firing of cannons and flamethrowers. The thundering of 95mm and 40mm cannons fired in enfilade accompanied the conversion of countless thousands of people into pieces of half-liquefied flesh and shattered bones with sonic overpressure, as well as those killed or shredded directly. The wails of the wounded, the burning and the dying became even louder, while the chattering of machine-guns went on endlessly, mowing down the oncoming horde to more manageable numbers. Aircraft hurling any small bombs on hand, 40-alls and 40-burns, joined the fray and strafed the Japanese hard.

In total, about 300,000 of the civilians surrendered, they were all that remained after the military units had been cut down to the last man and last vehicle. Finally came the search-and-rescue operations, and it was then that the SI troops emerged from their APCs into a land which truly could only be described by Dante. Shredded human bodies, many burnt to crisps, piled up in hills of corpses, sometimes as tall as two men, fluids, flesh and residual body heat from the dead melted the snow and turned it red and brown in rivers of fluids from shredded human bodies. Human entrails squished and tore under the boots of soldiers as they walked cautiously through the graveyard. Bones crunched underfoot too, mostly the skulls and ribs of the bodies the troops had to walk over. The smell was horrific as broken fragments of people were scattered all over the place in a layer at least ten or twenty centimetres deep. Even the most hardened troops threw up at least once as they sifted through the mountains of dead to look for survivors who could possibly be saved. It was a nightmarish butcher shop that had been forced upon the men and women of SI's military arm by the Imperial Japanese Army.

Most of the survivors had to be put out of their misery by a merciful bullet to the head, but some of them blew themselves—and their would-be rescuers—up with hand grenades before they could be dug out of the mounds of human remains. Shortly after that, the search-and-rescue ended with the Raider IIs emerging from their enclaves—where they'd been restocking on ammunition delivered by the supply trucks—and cleaning up the battlefield. They ploughed long, deep trenches, then dozed their way through the piles of corpses, tearing quite a few apart (the stench of shredded intestines was rather nauseating) as the tanks did so. Finally they turned around and dozed the corpses into the trenches they'd ploughed out, before finally pushing some more frozen, cracked-up dirt onto the bodies to cover them up, regardless of whether they were alive or not. If there were still any survivors, they sadly were no longer worth the time, effort and doubtlessly lives required to retrieve them.

* * *

><p>While the first surge was happening, Hannah received alarming news: The Communist Chinese, victorious in China, had just joined the war, persuaded by Truman, on the Allied side and invaded the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria. That was bad, very bad, it meant the Chinese could set up their own puppet state in Korea which would likely clash with Allied states in the future and cause tensions between the powers. She also suspected inviting another probably up-and-coming superpower to the Allies was to intimidate her into submission, but she didn't trust Mao as far as she could throw him… Actually, that could be pretty far, but that was beside the point.<p>

She needed to advance, immediately, and finish off Honshu as soon as possible before moving on to the other islands and the Korean Peninsula. She'd already installed a state of semi-martial law in her occupied territories. No Allied personnel were to assault Japanese people unless they hit first and even then there would be an investigation. This law proved unnecessary since the surviving Japanese were the quieter, more docile ones that were surprised at the comparatively humane treatment they were getting and how the food supplies SI had requisitioned from the United States had been for THEM. The Allied personnel were also forbidden from eating the scarce Japanese food, though Truman had protested a little when food was being requisitioned from him, he shut up when Hannah told him that if he didn't give any food he would be no better than Hitler for putting the Japanese on starvation just for their race, like Hitler did with Jews. There was no uprising, there weren't even riots, though there were a couple protests when the Japanese Rising Sun flags were torn down and replaced with the Red Maple Leaf with Bars or Stars and Stripes all over the occupied lands. Things were stable behind the front, now it was time to push that front forward.

* * *

><p>AN: I hated how the Allies didn't let Hirohito take responsibility for war crimes he authorized, just to be politically expedient. Hannah knows when to be political and pragmatic… but she also knows when to be resolute and absolute in her morality. If a few deaths will let you kill a madman and prevent him from killing even more the next time, then you kill the madman. Mercy is for those who are powerful enough to extend it upon the defeated foe… but first that foe must be defeated.

* * *

><p><em>February-March, 1948<em>

Howitzers opened fire all along the front and rocket artillery fired en masse in the opening bombardment beginning at 0000, February 10. 7000 of the aging V-F-1946s, deployed by Aviation Divisions and Brigades alike, smothered the Japanese lines in what would be the greatest close air support mission in terms of weight of bombs and number of planes for the next several centuries. They flew in 5 groups, each group consisting of 1400 planes with one group in the air at any given time, the rest rearming and refuelling. The remaining 360 planes available were given CAP duty, also in 5 groups.

The huge number of planes came from two fixed-deployment Aviation Divisions which added up to 10 brigades with 480 planes each plus eight mobile-deployment style Aviation Brigades, with 320 planes each. They were armed with an assortment of bombs that rained down on the Japanese at relatively irregular intervals en masse all along the line even while the artillery was blasting the Japanese as hard as possible. American heavy bombers were hitting cities all over southern Japan with impunity, flying from Okinawa now, in support of this operation. They were especially focused on Kyushu and Shikoku, to soften those two islands up for the inevitable landings. American intel operations reported that Kyushu's defences had been weakened considerably by troops being pulled out to be thrown in front of the Niigata Line into their own line, and so the US invasion fleet set sail in Operation: Olympic.

Stage Three of Operation: Tyrannic had begun. Commonwealth troops had filtered into the line over the past week to man the weapons and installations as the tired SI troops rested and prepared for the operation. The bombardment continued until 0400, then abruptly stopped. From 1300 to 1400 there was another heavy bombardment. Then on February 11, there were two more bombardments, intermittent from 0000 to 0400 and 1300 to 1400. This pattern continued until February 14 as a magnified version of the usual artillery shelling that had happened since the Niigata Line had been installed, then it stopped so abruptly the Japanese were awake chattering on radio in a sort of fear for the whole night of February 14-15. The lack of SI radio chatter for the last several days unnerved them even further. This silence was because Tyrannic had been so thoroughly planned that unless there was a severe disruption everyone knew exactly what to do, including responses to a few contingency scenarios. February 16 saw the bombardment resume, but it was on the 17th that everything really came to a head, with the initial bombardment even more furious than that of the 10th followed by Hannah's armies surging over the Line. The Japanese had gotten so used to the regular blasting that they were caught in near-total surprise that this time was actually followed up by an attack. They had thought the bombardments were a distraction from the attack on Kyushu.

It seemed that the Japanese still had plenty of kamikazes (having given up on trying to use them on the SI/British fleets) and these had taken a toll on the landing ships as they charged the shore at Kyushu, despite the pre-invasion distraction fleet killing most of them with AAA before the main operation. Suicide boats also attacked US landing craft and their escorts en masse at the southwest-most of the Japanese Home Islands. There hadn't been enough fuel to move them up for use against the invaders coming in from the north, so they were kept here for the defence of Kyushu. The US Marines and Army personnel ashore fought through heavy resistance with armoured support, destroying Japanese installation after Japanese installation using firepower superiority. They were still grinding their way up through southern Kyushu and its quarter-million defenders plus millions of armed civilians when the main hammer-blow of Tyrannic landed.

This blow was landed in the mountainous terrain of central Japan, and it taught the world that, to quote Hannah: "Anywhere a tank can possible go or be put is tank country, even the tops of mountains." By the end of the third day the offensive had completely isolated Tokyo and held the high ground all around the capital, and was blazing west with four of the seven divisions she had on hand. Certainly, the Hokkaido division (Eighth Division) had been brought down to supply heavy hitting power for keeping northern Honshu under control, but enough Logistics and Aviation brigades were in Hokkaido to keep the peace and to keep the Allied troops in check This was to prevent any infractions between Japanese civilians and Allied personnel, to maintain their moral high ground, whatever was left of it after the Niigata Line Massacres.

A huge flag was brought up on the fourth day and a group of soldiers ascended Mount Fuji to plant it after the entire area was secured. The three divisions that surrounded the Kanto Plain were left where they were and dug in as the others advanced doggedly west, supported by Allied troops from the Commonwealth. They had already blasted through Nagano, Kanazawa, Shizuoka, Nagoya, Gifu and were headed for Kyoto. The sheer firepower, armour and mobility superiority allowed them to do this so quickly, the canisters of sleeping gas also helped GREATLY in acquiring Japanese prisoners from caves. Being at DEFCON 1 meant this use of chemical warfare could be authorized, and Hannah had authorized it.

To facilitate isolation of the assorted islands, the Inland Sea was bombed like there was no tomorrow. For the ships there, there wasn't a tomorrow as a tide of aircraft loaded with bombs and in a few cases torpedoes washed over them. The Attack Submarines went in next, firing torpedoes at anything not yet sunk and sweeping the area clear of mines. They would remain there and torpedo anything they needed to until the end of the war, only leaving to re-supply. This killed all shipping between the Japanese Home Islands that was not done in rafts or boats with less draught than about 1.5 meters. The Japanese fleet could not stop them, for it had been bombed so thoroughly it no longer existed, the last few midget subs being torpedoed in their dry-docks BY the Attack Submarines.

Kyoto was overrun on February 25, 1948, due to need for pacification operations in the occupied territory, Osaka and Kobe fell two days later. Tottori was conquered on March the First, and Hiroshima was grinding under the treads of Raider II tanks by March the Eighth. However, contrary to her usual modus operandi, Hannah had ordered that Japanese telegram lines from Tokyo to the other islands be preserved. Hirohito was known to have escaped to Shikoku, which was now the most fortified island in the Japanese Home Islands as Kyushu was crumbling under the weight of the American armies marching up through it and Honshu was almost entirely occupied by a massive Commonwealth force, with the SI divisions as the tip of the spear. The calculated survival rate of the population of Honshu was a mere 33%, far higher than anticipated given the massive hordes that had swarmed the Allied lines with everything down to bamboo spears only to be mown down by machine guns and flamethrowers, plus cannons fired in enfilade if it was found expedient.

* * *

><p>AN: At the time, racists were the vast majority, Hannah is actually astoundingly open-minded, and after fighting as brothers with Black, Brown, and Asian people most of her troops are quite tolerant too. Bonds forged in battle are like that…

* * *

><p>On March 5th, all the Japanese Home Islands had been secured and occupied except Shikoku and the Tokyo region. To quote Hannah at the time, stating rather bitterly as she surveyed the footage of the "Fields of Death" as Allied troops named the battlefields for the sheer kill ratio, which was awfully close to being undefined, "If the Japanese consider asking for surrender terms too much of a loss of face, then let them lose face, or let them be crushed. No island so far has had a survival rate of 40%, but I guess that's why the Japanese started the war in the first place, though I didn't want this to be the solution to their problem… which was too many people with too little space to live in." It almost felt like the reports she had read of the Greek Civil War which was still raging even now.<p>

In the meantime, the succeeding Chinese Communists had pushed the Japanese into southeast Manchuria, almost to Korea, and Hannah just somehow knew that Mao, being a dictator, would sooner take all of Korea than adhere to his agreement with Truman. She had a bad feeling that if they did not crush Japan and execute Hirohito soon, as had been agreed on at Potsdam in a more secret part of the conference, the war might just continue with now-Communist China…

The invasion of Shikoku was perhaps going to be the most tragic event of all of World War Two, other than the Holocaust… but it wasn't, surprisingly. This was because of one facet of Stage four of Operation: Tyrannic. The _Dawn_ and the _Mist_—with the hull lettering painted _Hikari_ and _Kasumi_ respectively to mock the Japanese—sailed into Tokyo Bay. This was after Attack Subs, Corvettes and Frigates had swept the bay of mines and, with the help of several American and British battleships—including the _Duke__of__York_, fitted now with much more reliable turrets—ensured the absence of coastal guns. That meant they looked around, saw nothing, sailed in, waited, and the Japanese did nothing, not entirely unexpected considering the incessant aerial bombardment of all guns in Tokyo over the past weeks and the state of siege the city was under.

It was fortunate that much food had been stockpiled in the capital, or the Japanese would have starved. But according to many, that would have been a preferable fate to watching with awe as two ships flying the ship flags of their greatest battleships—the flags of the _Yamato_ and the _Musashi_—sailed into the harbour, turned their mighty armaments toward the city, and began shelling the Imperial Palace. The fact that both had been modified extensively did nothing apparently to prevent the Japanese from recognizing the distinctive flags of the ships. As traditionally a ship's flag would always be torn down if the ship sank, and would never be allowed to fall into enemy hands… there was only one conclusion that the Tokyo civilians and Army could draw on that fateful day, March 7, 1948.

They, Japan, had been utterly crushed, if the enemy could have taken the very symbols of Japan—for Yamato was a term for the Japanese race/culture as a whole—and transformed, modified, mutated, _desecrated_ them, then all must have been lost. The shelling of the essentially abandoned Imperial Palace was not nearly as significant as the psychological effect it had on Tokyo and the shocks that travelled through Shikoku as the news was received and spread. For once, the rumours spread slower than the photos on the pamphlets spread by rented B-29s from the US Air Force, but still the civilian will crumbled. Vast sections of the coast were left undefended in the sort of national mourning, and at a few select areas, the Invasion of Shikoku began at the same time as the three SI divisions and seven Allied divisions surrounding Tokyo surged toward the city.

SI First and Second Divisions, followed by the 131st and 79th Divisions of the British Army, came ashore at the large peninsula-like extrusion north of Matsuyama, probably one of the largest cities left on Shikoku. There they met immediate and very stiff—about as stiff as a bamboo stick under a Raider II tank tread—resistance from Japanese Army units, which fought hard despite morale hitting absolute rock bottom. Third and Fourth Divisions, backed by three US divisions, were coming ashore near the southernmost point of the island to nearly no resistance, thanks to the crumbling civilians. Fifth and Sixth Divisions were landing in the east, across the Inland Sea form Kobe and exploiting the valley leading west as well as the plains to the northwest of their LZ to rapidly establish a powerful foothold, fortified by an Australian division and a British Army division. The invasion had begun on March 9, 1948, when it became apparent that despite their despair Japan was determined to commit national seppuku just to preserve face.

In the meantime, the Tokyo area was thoroughly overrun, all defence collapsing as many soldiers and civilians committed mass suicide in the streets with the smoke of the Imperial Palace being levelled forming a backdrop. It took until March 15th to, as Hannah snarled when she read the reports of mass suicides throughout Shikoku just like there had been on Honshu and Kyushu, "Slice the face—which Hirohito wants to keep—off his thick head." She didn't quite do that per se, but she did take care of him personally after the man was dug out from under wreckage along with most of his royal family.

"You speak English?" She growled at him as he was dragged before her by two of her soldiers who threw him before her. He'd been found unconscious after the palace compound had been levelled, hence was captured alive and woke up bound and gagged, with a metal tube jammed between his teeth preventing him from biting off his own tongue in an attempt at suicide.

"Yes" it came out garbled and sounded like "Yesh" but Hannah could understand anyways.

"Tell me, Emperor, why did you start this war?" She shoved the microphone at his mouth.

"The military had a good plan to lead Japan to a glorious destiny of power… I was mostly a figurehead for them." He was still comprehensible enough for the rest of the audience too, judging by the spectators' hissing and spitting at him.

Shouts of "Kill him! Kill him!" rose from the spectators in a great tide of rage before Hannah waved it down and the crowd silenced itself.

"Well, your military failed, and let me tell you, even figureheads can fight their puppet-masters. The Emperor of Japan could make all the Japanese women shave their heads if he decreed it, make your people walk with their hands, but you couldn't wrestle power back from the Army? Bullshit." Hirohito looked away for a moment before Hannah yanked his head back around with fire in her eyes "You authorized the Three Alls Policy in China, you know what that stands for? Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All. Maybe your people should get what's coming to them for supporting such an emperor? An eye for an eye?"

"No, my people are innocent in this!" Hirohito actually managed to shuffle forward a few centimetres on his knees before Hannah kicked him in the stomach to stop him.

"I'm impressed, you have some shred of humanity left after all… you directly sanctioned the deaths of at least 3 million Chinese civilians, and forced the Chinese into a Scorched Earth Strategy. You authorized the killings of over 30 million in the Pacific Theatre by not stopping Japan's out-of-hand military. The worst thing about you as an Emperor was that even when you'd lost, you would not accept deposing of the monarchy and would rather see more than 30 million of your own citizens, men, women and children, looking to you for protection against the big bad world, throw themselves at my tanks. You killed them, Hirohito, not my men, not the Americans, you killed them. Can you live with that guilt? If you can, then you deserve to die, if you can't, then I will give you this final mercy that you deserve." She pushed her pistol to the man's head "Any last words?"

He started in Japanese, then translated to English "With this… I apologize to all of my subjects for the crimes and humiliation they have been forced to bear by my folly…" Hirohito closed his eyes as he finished.

"Good, you at least are decent enough to apologize to them. May you rest in peace, Hirohito, may the Empire of the Rising Sun rest in peace." She gagged him "I hope this hurts more than the obligate hanging an international court has already decreed for you, you deserve it after your sins. A few apologetic words do not balance out an ocean of tears and blood." Then she fired once into his groin to wild (in motions) but quiet (in volume) cheering from the audience eagerly awaiting the serving of justice "That was for the millions of women raped and murdered by the armed forces that you authorized to invade foreign countries." Then she yanked him up by his hair and pushed the gun to the man's forehead as his eyes watered and he writhed in pain. "This is a merciful bullet to the head of a malignant ideology. This will be the death of fear and the birth of hope."

* * *

><p>Something notable to readers is the fact that when almost a century later a certain leader who shall not be named here and is at this point in time (1948) unknown to the world at large paraphrased her, Hannah complained for several moments before returning to her work. Unfortunately, most people had by that point long since forgotten the victory speech at the end of the Second World War, thanks to the wars in between, however, SI Propaganda still got the man pretty good for being a copycat.<p>

* * *

><p>She moved slightly away from the microphone before firing, then firing again, splattering the platform she was on twice with blood and brains. Then she threw the corpse off the platform where it landed with a dull thud and truly thunderous applause "Rejoice, people of the free world, the blood of your oppressors have been spilt and twenty years of tyranny had ended! Change is coming! The future… will be ours!" The up-thrust fist brought a loud shout and similarly up-thrust fists from all the assembled soldiers at the final victory gathering, needless to say, there was no protesting whatsoever in the Allied Nations as to the execution of Hirohito.<p>

Unfortunately it also brought the survival rates of the Japanese Home Islands' populations down a bit as mass suicides happened all over Japan at the news of their Emperor's death. It was not broadcast, but the basic summary, censored the way Hannah wanted it censored, was printed in papers. There was now only one problem: What to do with Japanese government? Certainly it would be an Allied puppet state of sorts as it was basically shaved down to just over a quarter of its pre-war population. However, the two teenaged candidates for a puppet Emperor, which the Allies had chosen to use as it had more sway with the Japanese people, had both died. The elder son of Hirohito had died fighting, while his brother had been crushed under debris. There was only one real candidate left: the young Yoshiro, who had been found with his mother, hiding in a secret passage out of the hastily set up imperial quarters. The kid was barely a year old, so Truman assured Hannah he would make an ideal puppet. Besides, she didn't allow the murder of children… those running at her troops with explosives strapped to themselves excluded of course.

The people of Japan had been used to an emperor for so long that direct democratic conversion was going to be too rough, and they would NOT respond well to it if she presided over them. None of the other Allied leaders wanted to look anything like a dictator, even if it was for a brief time, it seemed. Hence, she agreed with Truman and the other allies and installed Yoshiro as a puppet, with a full-scale military occupation of Japan. Things would be all right… until the end days of the Psychic Dominator Disaster, over 35 years after the day Yoshiro was crowned. It would be then that madness would return to the world…

But that is a story for another day, another Part of this Archive.

* * *

><p>AN: The second part of the Archive is up now, it will likely examine crimes done by both sides first, you have been warned. There will be reasons why Hannah didn't quite take the UN side in it… and managed to persuade Mao of something

This is the first story I've ever had end on a prime-numbered chapter, it feels… wrong somehow, like I've compressed the second half too much, compromised my principles, or something. Then again it does technically cover three wars, the Spanish Civil War, the Winter War and World War Two, as well as being mostly impersonal, so I guess… yeah.

To complainers, Napoleon took a LONG time with his victory streak before his first defeat…

REVIEW!


End file.
